1 


a • 4 


t • ^ . aa a 


« - 4 

. • * 

< W 

< «• V • 

• • 

^ * 


•4 ^ • » 

W # ^ ^ 

» « ^ « « 


» «| * w «» «« • 

# •• • . •t , , . 

*• • ^ •» •r / # 

••««<« > «i • 4 

4* * « • « 

(«•.•.< 4 

« « « « ^ • «i 

^ «• ^ < * . . 

« •« «« 4 

#•«* •• H ^ 

H ••* 4 % 

^ •! « 

. « . tl H «. •! •• « 

* •* . «V »« • « 

M M « .» 4< 

«« #1 • • 

» « «* • • I 

^ • « 4 

M 

» « 4 ^ 4 •X 

M ^ 4 a • 


# ^ • '#*v 

• . • • • 

4f • « « * 

« 4 I a 4 


* •» « 
« ^ 

• a « 


« 4 « • 

r . ^ M 


4 ■ 4 . m m 

m4 « 

- • 4 ^ • 

4 ^ > 

«« «ir ^ « 4 

# « # • « 


« ^ « 
f 


^ 44 « 

^ • 




•« « 4 

•J 




•< ^ 
V • * < 


« « • 

ft - 

• «> « 


* ‘•a 

• ■* 

1 

•a ^ 


> « 4 

« « 

4 ft 


•>a\ 

« 'a"a 

4 

•I » 4 


^ • 

« « 
^ ( 


•ft at « «- 

a • 4 

•a «a » 4 

« ft ft x 1 

ft « « « 

t ft ' ■ * 4 

• % « # • 

^ . « » » ft 

. ft • 41 4 < 


ft ft 

ft ft 4 
ft • 


» • . 

» 4* 


a 4fta ...ft«.««.ft«4aftka*«fta>«« <4-a4 

«><• -.a ftA’aaftft* « — ft«'ft '*« 4 

•ft ft*»»--fta-aft»|t»<ftfta*ftft««,ft»44^, 

ksaaftaftftaa^a* .^««a •«ftftftft4«««ft« • 

a 4, a a, 4a ft ,<4aft« ftft ,* a^ft-'ftttft-aft 

ft '4 ft ft^#«-ft a««ft«««4|4ftaft««4%« 4ft« ««•« 

•ftl- •, fta'*ft4«'-%«<^-* 4«ft«*ftft 

a •4ftft»--ft — •••ft' '^a. ftft ,,ft*a|44|.aa4ft 

ft ftft •• ftftft ftlftkaftaa. ft •'«• ^-a - •• 444 •«> 

a 4 .la at ft • « •«• a*>4ft> •! 44<«a. ft a*««4r1ft <* 

• a,. ..ft. a,aa«l44 rf.a. ^ftaa-, ^4 

ft - a.,* 4 « •44«4afta ft •aaaft. %•«*'• ftft - .4 

.a' '.4aft^ftaa«»ft«4«4ft.4 .44«r4 44*4i4 

>a .•,a-4«.,.. .a .<^4 .•'••aift''ft«a 

•‘‘•*4 - '•‘ft'ft’ft'ft'ft'*** ^ft* '’,*ft^.''.'a''.,^«*fc’/’4‘-*ft' 

• •'•<>.. 44 ’, •• aft >.<ft 4 a 4 ftaftft 4 «aaa 

>«a«4a4 4a«'tft«*ftft«ft4 'ftft’ft a4a44«» 

>. ftfta.aftftft aaaa'afaiaftftftaaftVftftft^'tf 

ft*. »»Vfta.ftaa,as.aftaftft««-«a*ft44,4 

• a . 4 / ,.,•. a -. aftaaft^a-aftax^ 

a .4 4 4 .aatft a 4.. 4 % m 4 ft' .ft 4 •' 4 "a ft 

ft-'-.a,., -, -I...f *»4^ft»a-rftft-. 4 

aa* aftaftft a i aft*4 4^ft*44 994 4* ft 4«4ft*ft^4i 

•ft.aaaft .a'.ftaa -,V4ft4 a aaoft^ft.ft 

aa.a. - ftaftaftaft- a*a 4 *a'#4aa4-, -aft 

• « • « ^ ^ ^ ^ 4 ^ , 44 9«Vk • ^ 

ft.aa a a a.. •-♦ ft*. .a 1 4 ftaa a a • ft-. 44ft 4yft 

-•» 4ft. ft.ftafta ft r.ftaft lai-fta. ft. ft«a|,«a|ft 

4 •* ft44a«««a«4.'4aa , • ^ #4 «. ft a. ft aft 

«»aft-:- > •>ft 4ft««a-«-«4*44'4«aftft.ft«aft 

4taa. ftaa-^a-a* •.••-44a4*'ft.4-ai-ft44 

«4 V-4 • .^aaaft* ft ft .*4.- ft aftf4ftiftft «ftftft 

44' aft*««ft«^« -.ft4a«>««ftftw4«ft-ft«^4t 

-a a«.ft4ftaaaft«a-ftaaa>a'a,'fta4t«'«-*<r* 

• 1ft4«»,4* .•a•^l I«aft4-ft aft^ftft.^ad 

fta^4 4W«»»ft44 (fta.. a a -• 4«4ft«-<aft.fta 

^aft 4-ft4 a ftaa a a 4 a 4a a a • aa< aj* * ^ 

•»_ft-»-ft 4 • ft ftft ^’’a ft ft (.a 4 ft ft’ft 4 a. ft -ft -ft ft 4 • -rf aV 

•aft* •ft-ftaa -.aaftt a -••■,• ft «••• 4 ft ft aVft.^ft ft 

ftfts <•'** fta— a aaa a4f«-4-ft‘aftft«.ftftt.4ft 

•• •«"ft#4(ftftftftftftfta;a-a ftaavftaat « aft«.ft«ft 

M4ft4ftaftft'ft. aa4a - ■*■ ■ - 

•4 ftVftftftft aft|ft ft *ftftft^4(-4 ft««4 «ft * a «• 


•4 4 a 

ft -4 • 


•a «* • 

« • ft 


W a a • ft 4 • a ft'ft a a*. a 4 »*ft'ft”* 

• •«' *4 aaaa a •• aaa a5a«.«4 4 4 ^ 

4 - a ia.4ftft#ftft4 4«4aft^. « •.ft_ft 44; 

a. <44 ^ a ft ft (.a 4 ft ft ft ft a,«-«'« ft -rfa^ 

ft . ,ftft4 a ft ft a ft t ft ft aVft-^ft 4 


ft a ft ft 

ft' aa ftft- 


■ft ft .a ft 

• a « ■ 


ft a 

ft a 


ft- - a- ’a«.ft4«aa.a.4aa.^4«ay«<*.«ft4«4.4ftaft«ftft.ft'.«*4l'ftay,ft,ft 

•4 • ...,. *•-•«•. 4ft4a,aaf« ft)-ftft.««-«.«ft «4|«4i., ft«|ftftft4.4ft«ft«}ft 4ft 

ft.a- ft.a-a.. ft 4-ft -.. .a ft ftft.at..aaftft4ft|ft 

• •*-aa»....ft.a ■a.>.ftft4««ar««t.4«a(««4| 4a<4.«« «.^«a«.4| 4 

•••• — -.ftftftaaftlftiftaftftlft ftfta-|fta44ft.4ftftfta 4ft4,aft4«ft'a.«aa.-«4ft.4^ft 

-- .a.a«ft44«a4a-a.a^'a«a ft'«-ft4ft44a«a*4V444rft#«ft ft*ft<<arft/ft4'ft' 

• a - ft .a/ft 

ft / •' ftft.I a a.ft „.ft.|, aat a .Jt ft a ft 4 •• « ft « •■« tft4-4. .'4 ft»ft ' *4 •♦.• 

ftft-a • -a -aft. ftaaftaft.ftft-*<aaVft «ft«itft«ft9.«V^ 4****-<*l««a4 44 

-a- - «a 4a.a ft«4-'» ftaft* •,«4ft..ftft-.fta*»ft ft’Wftftfa ft' ftft, 

. a a 4 - ft a fta a •? -.• - ft . ft* aaaftaavVft', ,4 a.««a-a-('4« , a ft'ftaaial 

aftft .•• aaftfa^ft4a.'4%4ft44ft4ft^a^ft.aaft 'ft4ftft«4t4^aft.'^,9a|ft4.»a 4 

-a 4 -i'* --* .-a*'. •jft.*-.*fta|,« -a*ft.a i ft.a-ftft., 

a. » 4 . ftft. « .« «ftftft««ftaa«4 <444i(«4.aaa,Vftft«,ft4- 

.• ftfta. a *. a. a • fta a.aft.ft^ftft-4ft4a^'ft^a ft-44ftWftvft.«.«« 4lft«.- 

ft a -- 4a .5 .ft.a a. • -t 4 ■ — ^ * 4ft«fta4 4ftB.>a«ft«a4«444ft -^ftft«4.4>« 


M ■ . ft - 4 ' 

a; •^a( *. ft ft • ft « 

• - - ft < ft ft ft 


*• 4 4 ♦ I - 4» ^ a-ft «,a.-l|^4 

- a • ■' >• ii - • » 4 ’ ft ft «'4%4>' 

aa-aftft-^^** * ft-ftaJ-4 


•4ft - a *4.ftft ••Aaftaftftftftft-ftia 'aaft-aV* t 4 -ft'aa-ft-a 4 1 f - ^ • ftft^ftftafl.ft 

• , -ft-fc ft aa ftft.* 4 a ft .•ft. 4 ft 4 «aftaa«ft 4 ft.a a ft. «ft a a«« 

.I 4 , 7 .. ^». fta«. aaa -4 - aft a, ft.., ,,.«a a afta - 4^ft.^ft4 ft 

.a. aa... - ft 4 i_aa.. «ftft4ftftfftftaft^ft«44fta^ft««aft^«’- 

a 4 - . — a. •■'*V..ftl|ftft--aa«-^a ft - ftaft.a .aaa . .. ft a«» ft* ftft . ft.-^ *♦. 

• •« -.ft... - ..., ... •_,ft ftyftft 4ft4,^a|ft 44 .ftft- .ft4%? M\A 

• .4 ,-4fta-j«.ft..aa< fta, 4* 4.a a»ft ‘«.a^.ft/'. ftaftft ft4aa<arft<aftft4.# 

• a -y .‘Aftftft-aiyft ••ftftaai..|aaa>ftV.ft^aa ^ -, 4 ft < < • 4, ft 4-^ 

'•• a-aft-ft.ft. .. ftV.ft. aftaaaa <. |. •ft^ft aft■a.ftft•a^.«4-.444•-^B«.(<*4 ‘^ * 

■••• •* -a 4 a. ..ftft ..ft. - .a, « a. ftft'. 44 . ^a., ft >«aa>«ft 4 ft ftft«-fft. 

I - • a- 4 .-a«aftftfta a,fta (\4 a. . .- 1 « 4 .a 4 .ft’. 4 .*ftf-tfta 4 ,««>« 4 ft-f« 4 . - ft 

ft aHftaaaaaiaaftftaaak.i.alaa. ftft-ftftB'fti ata-aa'ftftftafftftft^* tftft'^^tft 

• a- ....ft.a •a4a.4ftal.a«*«ft - » aa44ftftft|«-4.« .a.*ft 4a.. «...«'■« 

a . a -. 4al a 4.a a -a>a(-ft« a ftftft <4«aa^.ftftft.« .fta ft, ft jlftf 4 4 «.«• 

•fta-ft-aftaftftftaa# (a. -v.' .ftaa ftaataftftftftaft.^.ft^ft -ft.VBa-ftft-ftft 

4 a aa • a ft' .• aft aa -ft-, ^.a. . 4*.--. ...ft -•ftaft.Jft •-« 4ft a,ft«_ft « 


.a. .. .a..a«ft--.4^ya««, (•ft4.fta'.<*..ft.... « 4.4aa<4,. a4ft4ft4l« 

4 . a a -afta .* C* 44 ... -iftatft/afftft-ftaft . ft4ftft«ft « ft 4ftft.4,‘ 

aa a-aa»a«ftB*4*''****' '•a*a4ftftftft*'>a4a.a.4a4)ft44-a4#a4 4'444'*« 

a .ftav aft. a / ftftft^^.ft^ftlv.a .4-«ftftatft4ft-tA44 ftft4 aa fft 4 ft 

• a,.- a ..a a ftaaa .ftaftftftaftava.aft.ftaa* 4ft<(-44'ft44 

• •a 44 •' ' a a a-,,.4a.ft .-. ..f.. 4ftaft^aft4ft-4 ft 4 4-4,<- 

- .. I ft.aaaaaaft.aaft-, ft.ft-a a-ft aft.ft., ftB.a-ft.ft'ft .aftat - 

a. ..4.*«t.»««k. a4ftft4a4ft-ft«ft'ft-. ftWftftft-ft^^ftaft. '•i4aftft«^4(-<-;fttf,4. 

•••a-aa -ftaa .. ftaa .4 a - - laftaBi'^ a^ft yft 4 ft • ft a 4 

a 4 a ly a ft aa 4 # 4 , 44 .ftft < ft aaa^a'ft -.-■ .4 •<■«'' • ♦ ft^-a 4 ft'ft ft,ft'. ftaft, 

« a a a a a - 4 a .. ai.a -ft 4f> ^ « ai-ft^ft.a. ft! - fta aftj^a « 4|7 ft - ft a - .ft-Jft ft,ft 

• a a-«.a..^.ft a -a , ftft^ft>.*|.4afta*4ft _af B4.4 ft a444 ft 4 4 ftftft ft 

■44 «a(.a*y«4-.a -a ft . .. J^ft « .4 ftft ft- a ft.-ay,,,* ftft ft,, « 0Wy 4 ft ft ft ft ft.. 4 ^ i .4 • ^ ft.ft'# 

a- « a.i I - # ..4a4<-l«4-a.- 1.1.4 ♦» ’*4 4 a -4 aft. a J ft * 4 a a ftft 

- • a aaft fta - 4 4 ftft ’V* * ■■•*'*.•* 1 r* ftft#aaa.»4a .aft,, ft. ft. ft a, 

. ft-a a . . . . . a 4. . .’a. 4 , *4 . 4 , ft', '/ft ,. •» y4.4"4'^-»'*, .« ftft, ft. -4 -. -ft 4ft -ftftft.4. 

• a . 4 4 4 aVa «.a*. ftafft a a' ,va‘4 a-a-'.* 4.r«»ft 

-. - • 4. a • r - ft ft ft aft 4- ftftaft^'-l4,,tft/a 4aft-ftft4 4«^4Vft'f 4-*^ft4ft ^ 4 • 4-« ft-4 

ftaa.. . .a. . ....ft,.. . .1 ft. a*., V a aft4ft.ftft4,4.yaa a.ft« 

a , ft4«.« ftat ■■ a- ft 4 a a ^ft a .ftwa-ftft.fti^aj^.ftftl-ft^ftfta • fta%a a a ft 4 ft v-ft ft ft .4 4-ft ft.ft 

a - ..*.(< a a-f.a a'4 . - . -ft ••«.»•-• ,• fta-ft.ftaa-a./a a. a . 4 4 

sft "ftftftaa a -ft« .ft •. m m 4 .ftjftftfti^fti^avftft a 4ft ft* ftftaa* a/.4«.ft.«-4a. 

a -fta aa-ftftMatfta^ialfttaafaaJftft a. 'a-a. ,, 4.a«4.^«aa-aft.4fta.. 4 4,44-44 4 4,•■* 

a «'«-'ft -«ftxft>«ft..,«4lftft«4««ftft 44-4^-a4ft«ftf.ftft.« ^4a « a a a 4ft ftft ftft^.ft 

.x.ftft.a.aaa»..a».-a ••4«a.-..aft-aft,W-ftft'a4aft.-aaaftftaa.fta* »a .a* - ft , a. aaft* 

.. - a «• aa... ««• ••• aftftfta .fta tar.*4|-ft4afy«-ta«ft/4ftftal4«aft4ft 4 • * ftaf-* 

ft • „.aaaftfta4 ••4a'aftaa|a«^. .4.ft«ft4aftW«ft4ft-*a«4 a-a* ^ „ m ■•ft ft « ft ft.atft ft 

... a X a.. vaal.-fta . ..aaftaft^ft.ft,. ftaft-4«4ft«a4aafta«444 .fta^ftftaa 

•a a .ft.ft'ft A ••« •••-.•« a-y *^4 aft «4a.4«a>ft4«>. 4.- 4 t «*ft aa-a ft ft 4 4-«'a.«>4 

'n-a'ft ft a y W.ft 4 

a ^4 •« 4^4 - (-a ft'ft*. a 4 

a ft 4 4 4 4 4 

t 4 ■* ■• a-^ ^^a.ft ♦ «, 


aft > • 

aft 


f •/‘•I 4 


* a • -a 

ft . .4 - 


> aft ft - 

aa .1 . a 


^ a - 

ft ft - « 


- *4 

-a , 


■ » , . ft . .. 

♦ a-.ft* 
• a . * 4 


a 4 

a a 


ft,'^ ft « 

1- j ft * -■i •.• 


m * 

• - a 


-ft . ' ft fta 

I , ft « 4 -4 

4 < -4 1 


4 *1* a ♦ 4 • 

r » 4 4 




a,ft a-a-a •« ft 4 4 ft.4 < '4ia » a a., a . .a • ft 4 a ft .4 ft ^ H(« 

'., a a aft« J. 4 aft .4 ftJ«ft.. 4 a. 4 .«. 4 aftft «4i-fa 4ft4»^4.ft~ft 

4 a . ft < a - J 4 4 ft 4 • J ^ • « •« ^ - • ft • - .... X* -a • ... ft ■• ft ft i.. 4 * -^v ft 

a., . .. ./ I « •» 4 a #4 4-. 4-' taa 4 a a 4 J«4V-4 444<4<.a*'f 

4ftfta4 ... * 4 a ft. a 4,4,. yaa 4«4 . 4 ^. •« •. ft ft^A^aft^ 

1 , 4 . a a a 4 .4 a 4 4 * •• 4 ft 4 a - .a^a’ 41 , 4. ft a aftlft .▼•ft-ft^ft 

,a.ft.a 4 ft 4 4 ft • *:♦ * • * * * *• * ■* 4 ^ ^ * ' ‘^-^^••■a-Ja 


4 4.4 

4 4 4. 

' ft -4 4 ft - 4 a a ft ft ' 4 - -4 ■*,*• • •' ♦ ■ 1* 

ft a 4 a - a. ft . « 4 • a a 4 • i ft . * * • a ft. 4 . 'ft 

44 . 44 ft I. a’ .•ft..'at....-.44-J.a..a.#4.4.* 4-* 

. ■’.’4ft««.«-ft4Vft--4 .aft.a. 44 

ft ^4 ♦'* a .’ft ’4 *'• •«'« •< 4ftft -4 a-, a • a • ft . ft- <«fta44^ -.4, < -4 

a .. a a • a • •. a • • • -4-' awft.a • a . a - ft.'. ftlftlVft^ata- 

- a ft. aaft., . a.^a 4 «/a 4 . . 4 » a ,4 t 'ftafft.ft.ftft .^4 ,ft 4 . 4 .ft 

...«. 4 ft 4 .ft a ft. a •. a . '• • a ». a.a^'a',ft-«> 

4.4 - , 4 4 I i 4> 4. ft, ft ••...ftftaift*. aft. ftft 44 - A-ft 4'f*-f •-■4 

. 4 . ftft ft. fta .-; 4 la ftVjftVftiaft 

t 4 ^ ^ S' i . 4 ^ 'H'* * • * ^ . 4 ^ 4 4 4 44 J « A 4 \ 4 

ftyaaft-ft^aft^ft*!-'.. .. ' ' j ‘ * * ' ^ * ' a * ■ * ^ ^ ^ L ^ i * i 

ft 4 m aa, « ft ft - Va«a4» • -• aa.. aft ft, ft < ft ft-ft •<.' < 

a a a.\' a ft ft-ft 4 ft < a '* » •* •• 4a-ft ^.-ft a 1 4 ft 

/ 3 . . . . ft a a - • •■ • a a- • • -4 • • \ . a ’- .4 ft ^ A • 


4 4 4 

4 -4 a . , 

*: ' 4* a* 

4 a a 4 

• < • . 


a'-S* 

n 4 ^ 

• V ^ 

'•NS 


ft.ft 

a ' , ft - -ft ft ft ' ft 
I ft , ft t 4 . 4 “ 




. «» 

4 •• 


•* 





•I 




* ^ 

1 


$ 

«• 


« 


• -- 

- 







• 





•» 


«• 








• 


$ 

• 



• 1 


•1 


, • 

ft 


, 

. 1 



• r 

W «» 

#* 


w 

.( 

*•. 

_, 



< » 


»• 

•• 

• 



. 1 

• 




i 


• • 

«» 

1 

« # 
«» 

» • 

ft 





















I 



s 









■A. 




’ . 4- 


r * 


' '^1 ¥ - r - .» ^ 




V- 


#.' 
• t 




. t 


* V • ^ 




* y.-. 


4 







t* % 

<1 



A ’ • * 

V^. 




« 




w 



^ I 

4 4 

^ • 


J 


6 




» 










h!"dE BALZAC 

EUGENIE GRANDET 
THE COUNTRY PARSON 

AND OTHER STORIES 


TRANSLATED BY 

ELLEN MARRIAGE 


WITH PREFACES BY 

GEORGE SAINTSBURY 




PHILADELPHIA 

The Gebbie Publishing Co., Ltd. 


1899 












EUGENIE GRANDET 
THE MARANAS 
THE EXECUTIONER 
FAREWELL 

A SEASIDE TRAGEDY 


r,., THaviAto- ai;^!3DU3, 
If aAHA^^AM ^ 

t -' nm^HDom 3Hf' 

V#- . JJ3W:mA3.; 

^ iC' YdioMT-vpiaAaa/,' 


■t J 












9 


''* 4 * ’'^* - ‘ 1 - i.'./ '• njtvU JI"- »{• / i-’ ! 


•* A 




Tf. 





' • 


;ih 


•* 




^ ‘ V 


r, 


f 


• * . 




i:l ■■ ;■■ . r. ■ 

■■ • '•■'■.• 'V/T^ 


r. jV ’ ♦ * 




* V.. • .M V,» •_ ^i- »■»* v ‘, 

* - IS!.- ? •■ .Av "® .7', . •”•>. IBEt'/' ■ ..riL., 


. V A 


.:r * »-• > 


:'r 


/ iv 


’ 5 I' 


' IT' ' '•" *Ak?< 

*'•** '" .■• ■-^,^ '//>i '<• '•' > 

.. !'.- f •--»»■ ■, 


tS- 


. ^ 


>•( ' 







-- -cam •• - 




.* *1*^ ' i* i ■ 

* - ■ --v ' ? / I Mh ' I’V 






4 ^* 






•li 


■.:fi 




t ¥ 


■‘-' • * 


■ V, .... ® ■ 3 i 

r ■-■■.'• * .' . S.'- T '7r • S 


1 . ' . • 




♦ '.' 

i 




- i 


n: 



4. 


•' "% 


I • « 






"iJ 


;v.i>. 




V’*-'' ’ 

« 

t 

* ’ »• • 1, 

r » 



Ij ^ ' 


i> ' . "•• 


i' I 





/, 




.'i*? •<■.■' .S 


.( 



' : i 

likuA'ii' V'*’*V * i I 












\ 




















. s 


‘4 


m 




. »»*' ♦ » . 


,1 






iA-: 


*■. **■ • ^r ' 


'•nmvM' 


*5 

'^3 ' 


fa. 


ji. 

■ -^ ■•-' 1 ^ ' . 

I ‘ ■■' ’. 'i':'/ '^h' tr' V/M vi^iiv . , !\^ 

m ,-. 



s • r 




,'i.vr-'» 


t' 

’m^m" 


+1 . ?^.' ^'' 


Vv( 


. ■ ':'/jL?^i ''< 

■f 

spt- ..... ^ . 

. r.i!u(^ '-k*' . I 

*•' t 4 .. y < j: 

w ^ .f iyiij^v.: • 

' '^f..v''.'■ 

IV' 














CONTENTS 


VOLUME I. 

rASK 

PREFACE . ix 

EUG&NIE GRANDET .i 

THE MARANAS .a*5 

THE EXECUTIONER .297 

FAREWELL .310 

A SEASIDE TRAGEDY . . . . ^ . . .359 

VOLUME 11. 

* X!* 

PREFACE .. . . ix 

THE COUNTRY PARSON 

I. VERONIQUE.I 

II. TASCHERON.52 

III. THE CURE OF MONTEgNAC.82 

IV. MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT^GNAC.I36 

V. VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 242 

ALBERT SAVA RON .385 


/ 



















1/ Trantfbr 




s t 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

VOLUME I. 

“COME, NANON, TAKE AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE” (p. 24) Frontispiece 

PAGE 

THE DOOR STOOD AJAR; SHE THRUST IT OPEN .... 125 

“DO YOU HEAR WHAT I SAY? GO! ”.I70 

HE WOULD SIT FOR WHOLE HOURS WITH HIS EYES FIXED ON 

THE LOUIS.195 

Drawn by D. Mur ray-Smith. 

“ IS THAT M. DIARD ? ”.293 

Drawn by W. Boucher. ' ' 

VOLUME II. 

“DO YOU WANT MONEY FOR SOME OF YOUR POOR PEOPLE?” . 50 

“ AH! SAVE HIS SOUL AT LEAST! ”.IO7 

FARRABESCHE LED THE WAY, AND V^RONIQUE FOLLOWED 


“SHE IS ONE OF THOSE WOMEN WHO ARE BORN TO REIGN J ” 
Drawn by D. Murray-Smith. 


174 

387 










~ •*. 

f: ' E 






85 ^ 0 ri'A>iT^yjJT TO 'ff'M 

,1. aMwaoV ^ 


HI 


lV 

kL. 




’l) t«^V 2A H'jiJV! Jiakf 

*2''" r.,- ^ P 

i^h 2 . .i.. '•**- . *r»in n T^fi»ai an-' inAi./- fit^bv. «>fV/j -" 

, 1.»-' ' . . - ,r, .* ;, • t ^ “'V ■:%. J » 

. ... . , '*fj‘, ’ <VA-4 c-f'A!iW Ti'Vv fiji' 


:A.’'I3 /SvrfTgXH ht|v^ b|r/(&w it.io»r.v 






ft r.ii 


’ 

i|^ .l4t**s -^*^viv\A. S\4|[* Yl>r»trvN JH ^ 

i „ i . ijfl 


• A;, ..^.i 


fj _. 4 cyf fUOV no 3 W 0 r ao/i TVrf/ imW*^ 

<. ^; -^x .. ■ ^ I' ,,v,- ' ■ ' ^ rr‘-»^aj ^ 


#» ' ' ' -. ' . *■•.■'--"^ *» ' \S'V-■'‘a 

kfj 



t 



PREFACE. 


one or two others of Balzac’s works, we come to a case of 
Qm's vituperavit ? Here, and perhaps here only, with “ Le 
Medecin de Campagne ” and “ Le Pere Goriot,” though 
there may be carpers and depredators, there are no open 
deniers of the merit of the work. The pathos of Eugenie, the 
mastery of Grandet, the success of the minor characters, espe¬ 
cially Nanon, are universally recognized. The importance 
of the work has sometimes been slightly questioned even by 
those who admit its beauty: but this questioning can only 
support itself on the unavowed but frequently present convic¬ 
tion or suspicion that a “good” or “goody” book must be 
a weak one. As a matter of fact, no book can be, or can be 
asked to be, better than perfect on its own scheme, and with 
its own conditions. And on its own scheme and with its own 
conditions “ Eugenie Grandet” is very nearly perfect. 

On the character of the heroine will turn the final decision 
whether, as has been said by some (I believe I might be 
charged with having said it myself), Balzac’s virtuous char¬ 
acters are always more theatrical than real. The decision 
must take in the Benassis of “ Le Medecin de Campagne,” 
but with him it will have less difficulty; for Benassis, despite 
the beauty and pathos of his confession, is a little “a person 
of the boards” in his unfailingly providential character and 
his complete devotion to others. Must Eugenie, his feminine 
companion in goodness, be put on these boards likewise? 

I admit that of late years, and more particularly since the 
undertaking of this present task made necessary to me a more 
complete and methodical study of the whole works, including 

(ix) 


X 


PREFACE. 


the most miscellaneous miscellanies, than I had previously 
given, my estimate of Balzac’s goodness has gone up very 
much—that of his greatness had no need of raising. But I 
still think that even about Eugenie there is a very little un¬ 
reality, a slight touch of that ignorance of the actual nature 
of girls which even fervent admirers of French novelists in 
general, and of Balzac in particular, have confessed to finding 
in them and him. That Eugenie should be entirely subju¬ 
gated first by the splendor, and then by the misfortune, of 
her Parisian cousin, is not in the least unnatural; nor do I for 
one moment pretend to deny the possibility or the likelihood 
of her having 

“ lifted up her eyes, 

And loved him with that love which was her doom.” 

It is also difficult to make too much allowance for the fatal 
effect of an education under an insignificant if amiable mother 
and a tyrannical father, and of a confinement to an excessively 
small circle of extremely provincial society, on a disposition 
of more nobility than intellectual height or range. Still it 
must, I think, be permitted to the advocatus diaboli to urge 
that Eugenie’s martyrdom is almost too thorough ; that though 
complete, it is not, as Gautier said of his own ill luck, artiste- 
merit complet; ” that though it may be difficult to put the 
finger on any special blot, to say, “ Here the girl should have 
revolted,” or, “ Here she would have behaved in some other 
way differently; ” still there is a vague sense of incomplete 
lifelikeness—of that tendency to mirage and exaggeration 
which has been, and will be, so often noticed. 

Still it is vague and not unpleasantly obtrusive, and in all 
other ways Eugenie is a triumph. It is noticeable that her 
creator has dwelt on the actual traits of her face with much 
more distinctness than is usual with him ; for Balzac’s extra¬ 
ordinary minuteness in many ways does not invariably extend 
to physical charms. This minuteness is indeed so great that 
one has a certain suspicion of the head being taken from a live 


PREFACE. 


xi 


and special original. Nor is her physical presence—abomin¬ 
ably libeled, there is no doubt, by Mme. des Grassins—the 
only distinct thing about Eugenie. We see her hovering 
about the beau cousin with an innocent officiousness capable 
of committing no less the major crime of lending him money 
than the minor, but even more audacious because open, one 
of letting him have sugar. She is perfectly natural in the 
courage with which she bears her father’s unjust rage, and in 
the forgiveness which, quite as a matter of course, she extends 
to him after he has broken her own peace and her mother’s 
heart. It is perhaps necessary to be French to comprehend 
entirely why she could not heap that magnificent pile of coals 
of fire on her unworthy cousin’s head without flinging herself 
and her seventeen millions into the arms of somebody else; 
but the thing can be accepted if not quite understood. And 
the whole transaction of this heaping is admirable. 

Nanon is, of course, quite excellent. She is not stupid, as 
her kind are supposed to be; she is only blindly faithful, as 
well as thoroughly good-hearted. Nor is the unfortunate 
Madame Grandet an idiot, nor are any of the comparses mere 
dummies. But naturally they all, even Eugenie herself to 
some extent, serve mainly as set-offs to the terrible Grandet. 
In him Balzac, a Frenchman of Frenchmen, has boldly de¬ 
picted perhaps the worst and the commonest vice of the 
French character, the vice which is more common, and cer¬ 
tainly worse than either the frivolity or the license with which 
the nation is usually charged—the pushing, to wit, of thrift to 
the loathsome excess of an inhuman avarice. But he has justi¬ 
fied himself to his country by communicating to his hero an 
unquestioned grandeur. The mirage works again, but it 
works with splendid effect. One need not be a sentimentalist 
to shudder a little at the ta ta ta ia of Grandet, the refrain of 
a money-grubbing which almost escapes greediness by its 
diabolical extravagance and success. 

The bibliography of “ Eugenie Grandet ” is not compli- 


xit 


PREFACE. 


cated. Balzac tried the first chapter (there were originally 
seven) in Europe Litieraire for September 19, 1833; 
he did not continue it there, and it appeared complete in the 
first volume of Scenes de la Vie de Province ” next year. 
Charpentier republished it in a single volume in 1839. The 
‘‘Comedie” engulfed it in 1843, chapter divisions then 
disappearing. 

All the Marana " group of stories appeared together in 
the fourth edition of the ‘‘Philosophical Studies,” 1835-1837. 
Most of them, however, had earlier appearances in periodicals 
and in the Eofnans ei Contes Philosophiques, which preceded 
the “Studies.” And in these various appearances they were 
subjected to their author’s usual processes of division and uni¬ 
fication, of sub-titling and canceling sub-titles. “ Les Ma- 
rana” appeared first in the Revue de Paris for the last month 
of 1832 and the first of 1833; while it next made a show, 
oddly enough, as a “ Scene de la vie Parisienne.” “Fare¬ 
well” (Adieu) appeared in the Mode during June, 1830, and 
was afterwards for a time a “ Scene de la vie privee.” “ The 
Executioner” {El Verdugo') was issued by the Mode for Jan¬ 
uary 29, 1830; and “A Seaside Tragedy” {Un Drame au 
bord de la mer') appeared nowhere except in book form with 
its companions until 1843, when it left them for a time (after¬ 
wards to return), and under another title accompanied several 
other stories in a separate publication. G. S. 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


To Maria. 

Your portrait is the fairest ornament of this book, and 
here it is fitting that your name should be set, like the 
branch of box taken from some unknown garden to lie 
for a while in the holy water, and afterwards set by 
pious hands above the threshold, where the green spray, 
ever renewed, is a sacred talisman to ward off all evil 
from the house. 

In some country towns there are houses more depressing to 
the sight than the dimmest cloister, the most melancholy 
ruins, or the dreariest stretch of sandy waste. Perhaps such 
houses combine the characteristics of all the three, and to the 
dumb silence of the monastery they unite the gauntness and 
grimness of the ruin, and the arid desolation of the waste. 
So little sign is there of life or of movement about them, that a 
stranger might take them for uninhabited dwellings; but the 
sound of an unfamiliar footstep brings some one to the window, 
a passive face suddenly appears above the sill, and the traveler 
receives a listless and indifferent glance—it is almost as if a 
monk leaned out to look for a moment on the world. 

There is one particular house front in Saiimur which pos¬ 
sesses all these melancholy characteristics; the house is still 
standing at the end of the steep street which leads to the 
castle, at the upper end of tlie town. The street is very quiet 
nowadays ; it is hot in summer and cold in winter, and very 
(lark in places; besides this, it is remarkably narrow and 
crooked, there is a peculiarly formal and sedate air about its 
houses, and it is curious how every sound reverberates through 
( 1 )* 


2 EUG&NIE GRANDET. 

it—the cobblestones (always clean and dry) ring with every 
passing footfall. 

This is the oldest part of the town, the ramparts rise im¬ 
mediately above it. The houses of the quarter have stood 
for three centuries; and albeit they are built of wood, they 
are strong and sound yet. Each house has a certain character 
of its own, so that for the artist and antiquary this is the most 
attractive part of the town of Saumur. Indeed, it would 
hardly be possible to go past the house, without a wondering 
glance at the grotesque figures carved on the projecting ends 
of the huge beams, set like a black bas-relief above the ground 
floor of almost every dwelling. Sometimes, where these 
beams have been protected from the weather by slates, a strip 
of dull blue runs across the crumbling walls, and crowning 
the whole is a high-pitched roof oddly curved and bent with 
age; the shingle boards that cover it are all warped and 
twisted by the alternate sun and rain of many a year. There 
are bits of delicate carving too, here and there, though you 
can scarcely make them out, on the worn and blackened window 
sills that seemed scarcely strong enough to bear the weight of 
the red flower-pot in which some poor workwoman has set her 
tree carnation or her monthly rose. 

Still further along the street there are more pretentious 
house-doors studded with huge nails. On these our forefathers 
exercised their ingenuity, tracing hieroglyphs and mysterious 
signs which were once understood in every household, but all 
clues to their meaning are forgotten now—they will be under¬ 
stood no more of any mortal. In such wise would a Protestant 
make his profession of faith, there also would a Leaguer curse 
Henry IV. in graven symbols. A burgher would commem¬ 
orate his civic dignities, the glory of his long-forgotten tenure 
of office as alderman or sheriff. On these old houses, if we 
could but read it, the history of France is chronicled. 

Beside the rickety little tenement built of wood, with ma¬ 
sonry of the roughest, upon the wall of which the craftsman 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


3 


has set the glorified image of his trade—his plane—stands the 
mansion of some noble, with its massive round arched gate- 
way; you can still see some traces above it of the arms borne 
by the owner, though they have been torn down in one of the 
many revolutions which have convulsed the country since 1789. 

You will find no imposing shop windows in the street; 
strictly speaking, indeed, there are no shops at all, for the 
rooms on the ground floor in which articles are exposed for 
sale are neither more nor less tlian the workshops of the times 
of our forefathers ; lovers of the middle ages will find here 
the primitive simplicity of an older world. The low-ceiled 
rooms are dark, cavernous, and guiltless alike of plate-glass 
windows or of showcases ; there is no attempt at decoration 
either within or without, no effort is made to display the wares. 
The door, as a rule, is heavily barred with iron and divided 
into two parts; the upper half is thrown back during the day, 
admitting fresh air and daylight into the damp little cave; 
while the lower portion, to which a bell is attached, is seldom 
still. Tlie shop front consists of a low wall of about elbow 
height, which fills half the space between floor and ceiling; 
there is no window sash, but heavy shutters fastened with iron 
bolts fit into a groove in the top of the wall, and are set up at 
night and taken down in the morning. The same wall serves 
as a counter on which to set out goods for the customer’s 
inspection. There is no sort of charlatanism about the pro¬ 
ceeding. The samples submitted to the public vary according 
to the nature of the trade. You behold a keg or two of salt 
or of salted fish, two or three bales of sail-cloth or coils of 
rope, some copper wire hanging from the rafters, a few cooper’s 
hoops on the walls, or a length or two of cloth upon the 
shelves. 

You go in. A neat and tidy damsel with a pair of bare red 
arms, the fresh good looks of youth, and a white handkerchief 
pinned about her throat, lays down her knitting and goes to 
summon a father or mother, who appears and sells goods to 


4 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


you as you desire, be it a matter of two sous or of twenty 
thousand francs; the manner of the transaction varying as the 
humor of the vendor is surly, obliging, or independent. You 
will see a dealer in barrel-staves sitting in his doorway, twirl¬ 
ing his thumbs as he chats with a neighbor; judging from 
appearances, he might possess nothing in this world but the 
bottles on his few rickety shelves and two or three bundles of 
laths; but his well-stocked timber-yard on the quay supplies 
all the coopers in Anjou, he knows to a barrel-stave how many 
casks he can turn out,” as he says, if the vines do well and 
the vintage is good ; a few scorching days and his fortune is 
made, a rainy summer is a ruinous thing for him ; in a single 
morning the price of puncheons will rise as high as eleven 
francs or drop to six. 

Here, as in Touraine, the whole trade of the district de¬ 
pends upon an atmospherical depression. Landowners, vine- 
growers, timber merchants, coopers, innkeepers and lighter¬ 
men, one and all are on the watch for a ray of sunlight. Not 
a man of them but goes to bed in fear and trembling lest he 
should hear in the morning that there has been a frost in the 
night. If it is not rain that they dread, it is wind or drought; 
they must have cloudy weather or heat, and the rainfall and 
the weather generally all arranged to suit their peculiar 
notions. 

Between the clerk of the weather and the vine-growing 
interest there is a duel which never ceases. Faces visibly 
lengthen or shorten, grow bright or gloomy, with the ups and 
downs of the barometer. Sometimes you hear from one end 
to^ the other of the old High Street of Saumur the words, 

This is golden weather! ” or again, in language which like¬ 
wise is no mere figure of speech, “ It is raining gold louis ! ” 
and they all know the exact value of sun or rain at the right 
moment. 

After twelve o’clock or so on a Saturday in the summer¬ 
time, you will not do a pennyworth of business among the 


eugAnie grandet. 


5 


worthy townsmen of Saumur. Each has his little farm and his 
bit of vineyard, and goes to spend the “ week end ” in the 
country. As everybody knows this beforehand, just as every¬ 
body knows everybody else’s business, his goings and comings, 
his buyings and sellings, and profits to boot, the good folk are 
free to spend ten hours out of the twelve in making up pleasant 
little parties, in taking notes and making comments, and keep¬ 
ing a sharp lookout on their neighbors’ affairs. The mistress 
of a house cannot buy a partridge but the neighbors will 
inquire of her husband whether the bird was done to a turn ; 
no damsel can put her head out of the window without being 
observed by every group of unoccupied observers. 

Impenetrable, dark, and silent as the houses may seem, they 
contain no mysteries hidden from public scrutiny, and in the 
same way every one knows what is passing in every one else’s 
mind. To begin with, the good folk spend most of their lives 
out of doors; they sit on the steps of their houses, breakfast 
there and dine there, and adjust any little family differences 
in the doorway. Every passer-by is scanned with the most 
minute and diligent attention ; hence, any stranger who may 
happen to arrive in such a country town has, in a manner, to 
run the gantlet, and is severely quizzed from every doorstep. 
By dint of perseverance in the methods thus indicated a quan¬ 
tity of droll stories may be collected ; and, indeed, the people 
of Angers, who are of an ingenious turn, and quick at rep¬ 
artee, have been nicknamed ‘‘the tattlers” on these very 
grounds. 

The largest houses of the old quarter in which the nobles 
once dwelt are all at the upper end of the street, and in one 
of these the events took place which are about to be narrated 
in the course of this story. As has been already said, it was 
a melancholy house, a venerable relic of a bygone age, built 
for the men and women of an older and simpler world, from 
which our modern France is farther and farther removed day 
by day. After you have followed for some distance the 


6 


EUGilNIE GRANDET. 


windings of the picturesque street, where memories of the 
past are called up by every detail at every turn, till at length 
you fall unconsciously to musing, you come upon a sufficiently 
gloomy recess in which a doorway is dimly visible, the door 
of M. Grandef s house. Of all the pride and glory of propri¬ 
etorship conveyed to the provincial mind by those three 
words, it is impossible to give any idea, except by giving the 
biography of the owner—M. Grandet. 

M. Grandet enjoyed a certain reputation in Saumur. Its 
causes and effects can scarcely be properly estimated by out¬ 
siders who have not lived in a country town for a longer or 
shorter time. There were still old people in existence who 
could remember former times, and called M. Grandet “Good 
man Grandet,” but there were not many of them left, and 
they were rapidly disappearing year by year. 

In 1789 Grandet was a master cooper, in a very good way 
of business, who could read and write and cast accounts. 
When the French Republic, having confiscated the lands of 
the Church in the district of Saumur, proceeded to sell them 
by auction, the cooper was forty years of age, and had just 
married the daughter of a wealthy timber merchant. As 
Grandet possessed at that moment his wife’s dowry as well as 
some considerable amount of ready money of his own, he 
repaired to the bureau of the district; and making due allow¬ 
ance for two hundred double louis offered by his father-in-law 
to that man of stern morals, the Republican who conducted 
the sale, the cooper acquired some of the best vineland in 
the neighborhood, an old abbey, and a few little farms, for an 
old song, to all of which property, though it might be ill- 
gotten, the law gave him a clear title. 

There was little sympathy felt with the Revolution in 
Saumur. Goodman Grandet was looked upon as a bold 
spirit, a Republican, a patriot, an “advanced thinker,” and 
whatnot; but all the “thinking” the cooper ever did 
turned simply and solely on the subject of his vines. He 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


7 


was nominated as a member of the administration of the dis¬ 
trict of Saumur, and exercised a pacific influence both in 
politics and in commerce. Politicall}^, he befriended the 
ci-devants, and did all that he could to prevent the sale of 
their property; commercially, he contracted to supply two 
thousand hogsheads of white wine to the Republican armies, 
taking his payment for the aforesaid hogsheads in the shape 
of certain acres of meadow land belonging to a convent, the 
property of the nuns having been reserved till the last. 

In the days of the Consulate, Master Grandet became 
mayor; acted prudently in his public capacity, and did very 
well for himself. Times changed, the Empire was established, 
and he became Monsieur Grandet. But M. Grandet had 
been looked upon as a red Republican, and Napoleon had no 
liking for Republicans, so the mayor was replaced by a large 
landowner, a man with a de before his name, and a prospect 
of one day becoming a baron of the Empire. M. Grandet 
turned his back upon municipal honors without a shadow of 
regret. He had looked well after the interests of the town 
during his term of office, excellent roads had been made, 
passing in every case by his own domains. His house and 
land had been assessed very moderately, the burden of the 
taxes did not fall too grievously upon him ; since the assess¬ 
ment, moreover, he had given ceaseless attention and care to 
the cultivation of his vines, so that they had become the itte 
du pays,^ the technical term for those vineyards which pro¬ 
duce wine of the finest quality. He had a fair claim to the 
Cross of the Legion of Honor, and he received it in 1806. 

By this time M. Grandet was fifty-seven years old, and his 
wife about thirty-six. The one child of the marriage was a 
daughter, a little girl ten years of age. Providence doubtless 
sought to console M. Grandet for his official downfall, for in 
this year he succeeded to three fortunes; the total value was 
matter of conjecture, no certain information being forthcom- 

* Lit.: Head of the country. 


8 


EugRnie grande T. 


ing. The first fell in on the death of Mme. de la Gaudi- 
niere, Mme. Grandet’s mother; the deceased lady had been 
a de la Bertelliere, and her father, old M. de la Bertelliere, 
soon followed her ; the third in order was Mme. Gentillet, 
M. Graiulet’s grandmother on the mother’s side. Old M. de 
la Bertelliere used to call an investment throwing money 
away;” the sight of his lioards of gold repaid him better 
than any rate of interest upon it. The town of Saumur, 
therefore, roughly calculated the value of the amount that the 
late de la Bertelliere was likely to have saved out of his 
yearly takings ; and M. Grandet received a new distinction 
which none of our manias for equality can efface—he paid 
more taxes than any one else in the country round. 

He now cultivated a hundred acres of vineyard ; in a good 
year they would yield seven or eight hundred puncheons. 
He had thirteen little farms, an old abbey (motives of 
economy had led him to wall up the windows, and so preserve 
the traceries and stained glass), and a hundred and twenty- 
seven acres of grazing land, in which three thousand poplars, 
planted in 1793, were growing taller and larger every year. 
Finally, he owned the house in which he lived. 

In these visible ways his prosperity had increased. As 
to his capital, there were only two people in a position to 
make a guess at its probable amount. One of these was the 
notary, M. Cruchot, who transacted all the necessary business 
whenever M. Grandet made an investment ; and the other 
was M. des Grassins, the wealthiest banker in the town, who 
did Grandet many good offices which were unknown to 
Saumur. Secrets of this nature, involving extensive business 
transactions, are usually well kept; but the discreet caution 
of MM. Cruchot and des Grassins did not prevent them from 
a(idre.ssing M. Grandet in public with such profound deference 
that close observers might draw their own conclusions. 
Clearly the wealth of their late mayor must be prodigious 
indeed that he should receive such obsequious attention. 


eug£nie geandet. 


9 


There was no one in Saumur who did not fully believe the 
report which told how, in a secret hiding-place, M. Grandet 
had a hoard of louis, and how every night he went to look at 
it, and gave himself up to the inexpressible delight of gazing 
at the huge heap of gold. He was not the only money-lover 
in Saumur. Sympathetic observers looked at his eyes and 
felt that the story was true, for they seemed to have the yellow 
metallic glitter of the coin over which it was said they had 
brooded. Nor was this the only sign. Certain small inde¬ 
finable habits, furtive movements, slight mysterious prompt¬ 
ings of greed did not escape the keen observation of fellow- 
worshipers. There is something vulpine about the eyes of a 
man who lends money at an exorbitant rate of interest; they 
gradually and surely contract like those of the gambler, the 
sensualist, or the courtier; and there is, so to speak, a sort of 
freemasonry among the passions, a written language of hiero¬ 
glyphs and signs for those who can read them. 

M. Grandet therefore inspired in all around him the re¬ 
spectful esteem which is but the due of a man who has never 
owed any one a farthing in his life; a just and legitimate 
tribute to an astute old cooper and vine-grower who knew be¬ 
forehand with the certainty of an astronomer when five hun¬ 
dred casks would serve for the vintage, and when to have a 
thousand in readiness; a man who had never lost on any 
speculation, who had always a stock of empty barrels when¬ 
ever casks were so dear that they fetched more than the 
contents were worth ; who could store his vintage in his own 
cellars, and afford to bide his time, so that his puncheons 
would bring him in a couple of hundred francs, while many 
a little proprietor who could not wait had to be content with 
half that amount. His famous vintage in the year i8ii, 
discreetly held, and sold only as good opportunities offered, 
had been worth two hundred and forty thousand livres to 
him. 

In matters financial M. Grandet might be described as 


10 


eug£nie grandet. 


combining the characteristics of the Bengal tiger and the boa 
constrictor. He could lay low and wait, crouching, watching 
for his prey, and make his spring unerringly at last; then the 
jaws of his purse would unclose, a torrent of coin would be 
swallowed down, and, as in the case of the gorged reptile, 
there would be a period of inaction ; like the serpent, more¬ 
over, he was cold, apathetic, methodical, keeping to his own 
mysterious times and seasons. 

No one could see the man pass without feeling a certain 
kind of admiration, which was half-dread, half-respect. The 
tiger’s clutch was like steel, his claws were sharp and swift; 
was there any one in Saumur who had not felt them ? Such 
an one, for instance, wanted to borrow money to buy that 
piece of land which he had set his heart upon; M. Cruchot 
had found the money for him—at eleven per cent. And 
there was So-and-so yonder; M. des Grassins had discounted 
his bills, but it was at a ruinous rate. 

There were not many days when M. Grandet’s name did 
not come up in conversation, in familiar talk in the evenings, 
or in the gossip of the town. There were people who took a 
kind of patriotic pride in the old vine-grower’s wealth. More 
than one innkeeper or merchant had found occasion to remark 
to a stranger with a certain complacency, “There are mil¬ 
lionaires in two or three of our firms here, sir; but as for M. 
Grandet, he himself could hardly tell you how much he was 
worth ! ” 

In i8i6 the shrewdest heads in Saumur set down the value 
of the cooper’s landed property at about four millions; but 
•as, to strike a fair average, he must have drawn sometliing 
like a hundred thousand francs (they thought) from his prop¬ 
erty between the years 1793 1S17, the amount of money 

he possessed must nearly equal the value of the land. So 
when M. Grandet’s name was mentioned over a game at 
boston, or a chat about the prospects of the wines, these folk 
would look wise and remark, “ Who is that you are talking 


eugAnie grandet. 


11 


of? Old Grandet? Old Grandet must have five or six 
millions, there is no doubt about it.” 

“ Then you are cleverer than I am ; I have never been able 
to find out how much he has,” M. Cruchot or M. des 
Grassins would put in, jf they overheard the speech. 

If any one from Paris mentioned the Rothschilds or M. 
Laffitte, the good people in Saumur would ask if any of those 
persons were as rich as M. Grandet r And if the Parisian 
should answer in the affirmative with a pitying smile, they 
looked at one another incredulously and flung up their heads. 
So great a fortune was like a golden mantle; it covered its 
owner and all that he did. At one time some of the eccen¬ 
tricities of his mode of life gave rise to laughter at his 
expense; but the satire and the laughter had died out, and 
M. Grandet still went his way, till at last even his slightest 
actions came to be taken as precedents, and every trifling 
thing he said or did carried weight. His remarks, his cloth¬ 
ing, his gestures, the way he blinked his eyes, had all been 
studied with the care with which a naturalist studies the work¬ 
ings of instinct in some wild creature ; and no one failed to 
discern the taciturn and profound wisdom that underlay all 
these manifestations. 

“We shall have a hard winter,” they would say; “old 
Grandet has put on his fur gloves, we must gather the grapes.” 
Or, “Goodman Grandet is laying in a lot of cask staves; 
there will be plenty of wine this year.” 

M. Grandet never bought either meat or bread. Part of 
his rents were paid in kind, and every week his tenants 
brought in poultry, eggs, butter, and wheat .sufficient for the 
needs of his household. Moreover, he owned a mill, and the 
miller, besides paying rent, came over to fetch a certain 
quantity of corn, and brought him back both the bran and 
the flour. Big Nanon, the one maidservant, baked all the 
bread once a week on Saturday mornings (though she was not 
BO young as she had been). Others of the tenants were 


12 


eugAnie grandet. 


market gardeners, and M. Grandet had arranged that these 
were to keep him supplied with fresh vegetables. Of fruit 
there was no lack ; indeed, he sold a good deal ot it in the 
market. Firew'ood was gathered from his own hedges, or 
taken from old stumps of trees that grew by the sides of his 
fields. His tenants chopped up the wood, carted it into the 
town, and obligingly stacked his faggots for him, receiving in 
return—his thanks. So he seldom had occasion to spend 
money. His only known items of expenditure were for sacra¬ 
mental bread, for sittings in the church for his wife and 
daughter, their dress, Nanon’s wages, renewals of the linings 
of Nanon’s saucepans, repairs about the house, candles, rates 
and taxes, and the necessary outlays of money for improve¬ 
ments. He had recently acquired six hundred acres of wood¬ 
land, and, being unable to look after it himself, had induced 
a keeper belonging to a neighbor to attend to it, promising to 
repay the man for his trouble. After this purchase had been 
made, and not before, game appeared on the Grandets’ table. 

Grandet’s manners were distinctly homely. He did not say 
very much. He expressed his ideas, as a rule, in brief, sen¬ 
tentious phrases, uttered in a low voice. Since the time of 
the Revolution, when for a while he had attracted some atten¬ 
tion, the worthy man had contracted a tiresome habit of 
stammering as soon as he look part in a discussion or began 
to speak at any length. He had other peculiarities. He 
habitually drowned his ideas in a flood of words more or less 
incoherent; his singular inaptitude for reasoning logically was 
usually set down to a defective education ; but this, like his 
unwelcome fluency, the trick of stammering, and various 
other mannerisms, was assumed, and for reasons which, in the 
course of the story, will be made sufficiently clear. In con¬ 
versation, moreover, he had other resources : four phrases, 
like algebraical formulae, which fitted every case, were always 
forthcoming to solve every knotty problem in business or 
domestic life—I do not know,” I cannot do it,” “ I will 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


13 


have nothing to do with it,” and “ We shall see.” He never 
committed himself; he never said yes or no; he never put 
anything down in writing. He listened with apparent indif¬ 
ference when he was spoken to, caressing his chin with his 
right hand, while the back of his left supported his elbow. 
When once he had formed his opinion in any matter of busi¬ 
ness, he never changed it; but he pondered long even over 
the smallest transactions. When in the course of deep and 
weighty converse he had managed to fathom the intentions of 
an antagonist, who meanwhile flattered himself that he at 
last knew where to have Grandet, the latter was wont to say, 
“ I must talk it over with my wife before I can give a definite 
answer.” In business matters the wife, whom he had reduced 
to the most abject submission, was unquestionably a most con¬ 
venient support and screen. 

He never paid visits, never dined away from home, nor 
asked any one to dinner; his movements were almost noise¬ 
less ; he seemed to carry out his principles of economy in 
everything; to make no useless sound, to be chary of spend¬ 
ing even physical energy. His respect for the rights of 
ownership was so habitual that he never displaced nor dis¬ 
turbed anything belonging to another. And yet, in spite of 
the low tones of his voice, in spite of his discretion and 
cautious bearing, the cooper’s real character showed itself in 
his language and manners, and this was more especially the 
case in his own house, where he was less on his guard than 
elsewhere. 

As to Grandet’s exterior. He was a broad, square-shoul¬ 
dered, thick-set man, about five feet high; his legs were thin 
(he measured perhaps twelve inches round the calves), his 
knee-joints large and prominent. He had a bullet-shaped 
head, a sun-burned face, scarred with the smallpox, and a 
narrow chin ; there was no trace of a curve about the lines of 
his mouth. He possessed a set of white teeth, eyes with the 
expression of stony avidity in them with which the basilisk is 


14 


EUGENIE GRANDET 


credited, a deeply-furrowed brow on which there were promi-^ 
nences not lacking in significance, hair that had once been of 
a sandy hue, but which was now fast turning gray; so that 
thoughtless youngsters, rash enough to make jokes on so 
serious a subject, would say that M. Grandet’s very hair was 
“gold and silver.” On Ids nose, which was broad and blunt 
at the tip, was a variegated wen ; gossip affirmed, not without 
some appearance of truth, that spite and rancor were the cause 
of this affection. There was a dangerous cunning about this 
face, although the man, indeed, w'as honest according to the 
letter of the law; it was a selfish face; there were but two 
things in the world for which its owner cared—the delights 
of hoarding wealth, in the first place, and, in the second, the 
only being wlio counted for anything in his estimation, his 
daughter Eugenie, his only child, who one day should inherit 
that wealth. His attitude, manner, bearing, and everything 
about him plainly showed that he had the belief in himself 
which is the natural outcome of an unbroken record of suc¬ 
cessful business speculations. Pliant and smooth-spoken 
though he might appear to be, M. Grandet was a man of 
bronze. He was always dressed after the same fashion ; in 
1819 he looked in this respect exactly as he had looked at any 
time since 1791. His heavy shoes were secured by leather 
laces; he wore thick w'oolen stockings all the year round, 
knee breeches of chestnut brown homespun, silver buckles, a 
brown velvet waistcoat adorned with yellow stripes and but¬ 
toned up to the throat, a loosely-fitting coat with ample skirts, 
a black cravat, and a broad-brimmed Quaker-like hat. His 
gloves, like those of the gendarmerie, were chosen with a 
view to hard wear; a pair lasted him nearly two years. In 
order to keep them clean, he always laid them down on the 
same place on the brim of his hat, till the action had come to 
be mechanical with him. So much, and no more, Saumur 
knew of this her citizen. 

A few fellow-townspeople, six in all, had the right of entrv 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


15 


to Grandet’s house and society. First among these in order 
of importance was M. Cruchot’s nephew. Ever since his ap¬ 
pointment as president of the court of first instance, this young 
man had added the appellation “ de Bonfons ” to his original 
name of Cruchot; in time he hoped that the Bonfons would 
efface the Cruchot, when he meant to drop the Cruchot 
altogether, and was at no little pains to compass this end. 
Already he styled himself C. de Bonfons. Any litigant who 
was so ill inspired as to address him in court as “ M. Cruchot " 
was soon made painfully aware that he had blundered. The 
magistrate was about thirty-three years of age, and the owner 
of the estate of Bonfons {Boni Fon/is), which brought in 
annually seven thousand livres. In addition to this he had 
prospects; he would succeed some day to the property of his 
uncle the notary, and there was yet another uncle besides, the 
Abbe Cruchot, a dignitary of the chapter of Saint Martin of 
Tours; both relatives were commonly reported to be men 
of substance. The three Cruchots, with a goodly number 
of kinsfolk, connected too by marriage with a score of other 
houses, formed a sort of party in the town, like the family of 
the Medicis in Florence long ago; and, like the Medicis, the 
Cruchots had their rivals—their Pazzi. 

Mme. des Grassins, the mother of a son twenty-three years 
of age, came assiduously to take a hand at cards with Mme. 
Grandet, hoping to marry her own dear Adolphe to Made¬ 
moiselle Eugenie. She had a powerful ally in her husband the 
banker, who had secretly rendered the old miser many a ser¬ 
vice, and who could give opportune aid on her field of battle. 
The three des Grassins had likewise their host of adherents, 
their cousins and trusty auxiliaries. 

The Abbe (the Talleyrand of the Cruchot faction), well 
supported by his brother the notary, closely disputed the 
ground with the banker’s wife; they meant to carry off the 
wealthy heiress for their nephew the president. The struggle 
between the two parties for the prize of the hand of Eugenie 


16 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


Grandet was an open secret; all Saumur watched it with the' 
keenest interest. Which would Mile. Grandet marry? Would 
it be M. le President or M. Adolphe des Grassins ? Some solved 
the problem by saying that M.Grandet would give his daughter 
to neither. The old cooper (said they) was consumed with 
an ambition to have a peer of France for his son-in-law, and 
he was on the lookout for a peer of France, who for the con¬ 
sideration of an income of three hundred thousand livres 
would find all the past, present, and future barrels of the 
Grandets no obstacle to a match. Others demurred to this, 
and urged that both M. and Mine, des Grassins came of a 
good family, that they had wealth enough for anything, that 
Adolphe was a very good-looking, pretty behaved young man, 
and that unless the Grandets had a Pope’s nephew somewhere 
in the background, they ought to be satisfied with a match in 
^very way so suitable ; for they were nobodies after all; all 
Saumur had seen Grandet going about with an adze in his 
hands, and, moreover, he had worn the red cap of Liberty in 
his time. 

The more astute observers remarked that M. Cruchot de 
Bonfons was free of the house in the High Street, while his rival 
only visited there on Sundays. Some maintained that Mme. 
des Grassins, being on more intimate terms with the women 
of the house, had opportunities of inculcating certain ideas 
which sooner or later must conduce to her success. Others 
retorted that the Abb6 Cruchot had the most insinuating man¬ 
ner in the world, and that with a churchman on one side and 
a woman on the other the chances were about even. 

‘Ht is gowm against cassock,” said a local wit. 

Those whose memories went farther back said that the 
Grandets were too prudent to let all that property go out of 
the family. Mile. Eugenie Grandet of Saumur would be 
married one of these days to the son of the other M. Grandet 
of Paris, a rich wholesale wine merchant. To these both 
Cruchotins and Grassinistes were wont to reply as follows; 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


17 


‘‘In the first place, the brothers have not met twice in 
thirty years. Then M. Grandet of Paris is ambitious for that 
son of his. He himself is mayor of his division of the depart¬ 
ment, a deputy, a colonel of the National Guard, and a judge 
of the tribunal of commerce. He does not own to any rela¬ 
tionship with the Grandets of Saumur, and is seeking to con¬ 
nect himself with one of Napoleon’s dukes.” 

What will not people say of an heiress ? Eugenie Grandet 
was a stock subject of conversation for twenty leagues round; 
nay, in public conveyances, even as far as Angers on the one 
hand and Blois on the other! 

In the beginning of the year i8ii the Cruchotins gained a 
signal victory over the Grassinistes. The young Marquis de 
Froidfond being compelled to realize his capital, the estate 
of Froidfond, celebrated for its park and its handsome diateaii, 
was for sale; together with its dependent farms, rivers, fish- ^ 
ponds, and forest; altogether it was worth three million francs. 
M. Cruchot, President Cruchot, and the Abbe Cruchot by 
uniting their forces had managed to prevent a proposed 
division into small lots. The notary made an uncommonly 
good bargain for his client, representing to the young Marquis 
that the purchase money of the small lots could only be col¬ 
lected after endless trouble and expense, and that he would 
have to sue a large proportion of the purchasers for it; while 
here was M. Grandet, a man whose credit stood high, and 
who was moreover ready to pay for the land at once in hard 
coin, it would be better to take M. Grandet’s offer. In this 
way the fair marquisate of Froidfond was swallowed down by 
M. Grandet, who, to the amazement of Saumur, paid for it in 
ready money (deducting discount of course) as soon as the 
required formalities were completed. The news of this trans¬ 
action traveled far and wide ; it reached Orleans, it was spoken 
of at Nantes. 

M. Grandet went to see hi§ chateau, and on this wise: a 
cart happened to be returning thither, so he embraced this 
3 


18 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


opportunity of visiting his newly-acquired property, and took 
a look round in the capacity of owner. Then he returned to 
Saumur, well convinced that this investment would bring him 
in a clear five per cent., and fired with a magnificent ambi¬ 
tion ; he would add his own bits of land to the marquisate of 
Froidfond, and everything should lie within a ring fence. 
For the present he would set himself to replenish his almost 
exhausted coffers; he would cut down every stick of timber in 
his copses and forests, and fell the poplars in his meadows. 

It is easy after this explanation to understand all that was 
conveyed by the words, “ M. Grandet’s house”—the cold, 
dreary, and silent house at the upper end of the town, under 
the shadow of the ruined ramparts. 

'^’wo pillars supported the arch above the doorway, and for 
these, as also for the building of the house itself, a porous 
crumbling stone peculiar to the district along the banks of the 
Loire had been employed, a kind of tufa so soft that at most 
it scarcely lasts for two hundred years. Rain and frost had 
gnawed numerous irregular holes in the surface, with a curious 
effect; the piers and the voussoirs looked as though they were 
composed of the vermicular stones often met with in French 
architecture. The doorway might have been the portal of a 
gaol. Above the arch there was a long sculptured bas-relief 
of harder stone, representing the four seasons, four forlorn fig¬ 
ures, aged, blackened, and weather-worn. Above the bas- 
relief there was a projecting ledge of masonry where some 
chance-sown plants had taken root; yellow pellitory, bind¬ 
weed, a plantain or two, and a little cherry tree, that even 
now had reached a fair height. 

The massive door itself was of dark oak, shrunk and warped, 
and full of cracks; but, feeble as it looked, it was firmly held 
together by a series of iron nails with huge heads, driven into 
the wood in a symmetrical design. In the middle there was 
a small square grating covered with rusty iron bars, which 
served as an excuse for a door knocker which hung there from 


eugAnie grandet. 


19 


a ring, and struck upon the menacing head a great iron bolt. 
The knocker itself, oblong in shape, was of the kind that our 
ancestors used to call a “ Jaquemart,” and not unlike a huge 
note of admiration. If an antiquary had examined it care¬ 
fully, he might have found some traces of the grotesque human 
head that it once represented, but the features of the typical 
clown had long since been effaced by constant wear. The 
little grating had been made in past times of civil war, so that 
the household might recognize their friends without before 
admitting them, but now it afforded to inquisitive eyes a view 
of a dank and gloomy archway, and a flight of broken steps 
leading to a not unpicturesque garden shut in by thick walls 
through which the damp was oozing, and a hedge of sickly- 
looking shrubs. The walls were part of the old fortifications, 
and up above on the ramparts there were yet other gardens 
belonging to some of the neighboring houses. 

A door beneath the arch of the gateway opened into a large 
parlor, the principal room on the ground floor. Few people 
comprehend the importance of this apartment in little towns 
in Anjou, Berri, and Touraine. The parlor is also the hall, 
drawing-room, study, and boudoir all in one; it is the stage 
on which the drama of domestic life is played, the very heart 
and centre of the home. Hither the hairdresser repaired once 
in six months to cut M. Grandet’s hair. The tenants and the 
cur6, the sous-prefet, and the miller’s lad were all alike shown 
into this room. There were two windows which looked out 
upon the street, the floor was boarded, the walls were paneled 
from floor to ceiling, covered with old carvings, and painted 
gray. The rafters were left visible, and were likewise painted 
gray, the plaster in intervening spaces was yellow with age. 

An old brass clock-case inlaid with arabesques in tortoise¬ 
shell stood on the chimney-piece, which was of white stone, 
and adorned with rude carvings. Above it stood a mirror of 
a greenish hue, the edges were beveled in order to display 
the thickness of the glass, and reflected a thin streak of col- 


20 


EUGilNIE GRAN-BET. 


ored light into the room, which was caught again by the pol¬ 
ished surface of another mirror of Damascus steel, which hung 
upon the wall. 

Two branched sconces of gilded copper which adorned 
either end of the chimney-piece answered a double purpose. 
The branch roses which served as candle-sockets were remov¬ 
able, and the main stem, fitted into an antique copper contri¬ 
vance on a bluish marble pedestal, did duty as a candlestick 
for ordinary days. 

The old-fashioned chairs were covered with tapestry, on 
which the fables of La Fontaine were depicted; but a thor¬ 
ough knowledge of the author was required to make out the 
subjects, for the colors had faded badly, and the outlines of 
the figures were hardly visible through a multitude of darns. 
Four sideboards occupied the four corners of the room, each 
of these articles of furniture terminating in a tier of very dirty 
shelves. An old inlaid card-table wdth a chess-board marked 
out upon its surface stood in the space between the two win¬ 
dows, and on the wall, above the table, hung an oval baro¬ 
meter in a dark wooden setting, adorned by a carved bunch 
of ril)bons; they had been gilt ribbons once upon a time, but 
generations of flies had wantonly obscured the gilding, till its 
existence had become problematical. Two portraits in pastel 
hung on the wall opposite the fireplace. One was believed 
to represent Mme. Grandet’s grandfather, old M. de la Ber- * 
telliere, as a lieutenant in the Guards, and the other the late 
Mme. Gentillet, as a shepherdess. 

Crimson curtains of gros de Tours were hung in the windows 
and fastened back with silk cords and huge tassels. This luxu¬ 
rious upholstery, so little in harmony with the manners and 
customs of the Grandets, had been included in the purchase of 
the house, like the pier-glass, the brass timepiece, the tapestry- 
covered chairs, and the rosewood corner sideboards. In the 
further window stood a straw-bottom chair, raised on blocks 
of wood, so that Mme. Grandet could watch the passers-by 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


21 


as she sat. A work-table of cherry wood, bleached and faded 
by the light, filled the other window space, and close beside 
it Eugenie Grandet’s little armchair was set. 

The lives of mother and daughter had flowed on tran¬ 
quilly for fifteen years. Day after day, from April to Novem¬ 
ber, they sat at work in the windows ; but the first day of the 
latter month found them beside the fire, where they took up 
their positions for the winter. Grandet would not allow afire 
to be lighted in the room before that date, nor again after the 
31st of March, let the early days of spring or of autumn be 
cold as they might. Big Nanon managed by stealth to fill a 
little brasier with glowing ashes from the kitchen fire, and in 
this way the chilly evenings of April and October were rend¬ 
ered tolerable for Mme. and Mile. Grandet. All the house¬ 
hold linen was kept in repair by the mother and daughter; 
and so conscientiously did they devote their days to this duty 
(no light task in truth), that if Eugenie wanted to embroider 
a collarette for her mother she was obliged to steal the time 
from her hours of slumber, and to resort to a deception to 
obtain from her father the candle by which she worked. 
For a long while past it had been the miser’s wont to 
dole out the candles to his daughter and big Nanon in 
the same way that he gave out the bread and the other matters 
daily required by the household. 

Perhaps big Nanon was the one servant in existence who 
could and would have endured her master’s tyrannous rule. 
Every one in the town used to envy M. and Mme. Grandet. 

Big Nanon,” so called on account of her height of five feet 
eight inches, had been a part of the Grandet household for 
thirty-five years. She was held to be one of the richest 
servants in Saumur, and this on a yearly wage of seventy 
livres! The seventy livres had accumulated for thirty-five 
years, and quite recently Nanon had deposited four thousand 
livres with M. Cruchot for the purchase of an annuity. This 
result of a long and persevering course of thrift appealed to 


22 


eugAnie grandet. 


the imagination—it seemed tremendous. There was not a 
maidservant in Saumur but was envious of the poor woman, 
wlio by the time she had readied her sixtieth year would have 
scraped together enough to keep herself from want in her old 
age; but no one thought of the hard life and all the toil 
which had gone to the making of that little hoard. 

Thirty-five years ago, when Nanon had been a homely, 
hard-featured girl of two-and-twenty, she had not been able 
to find a place because her appearance had been so much 
against her. Poor Nanon ! it was really very hard. If her 
head had been set on the shoulders of a grenadier it would 
have been greatly admired, but there is a fitness in things, and 
Nanon’s style of beauty was inappropriate. She had been a 
herdswoman on a farm for a time, till the farmhouse had been 
burnt down, and then it was that, full of the robust courage 
that shrinks from nothing, she came-to seek service in Saumur. 

At that time M. Grandet was thinking of marriage, and 
already determined to set up housekeeping. The girl, who 
had been rebuffed from door to door, came under his notice. 
He was -a cooper, and therefore a good judge of physical 
strength; he foresaw at once how useful this feminine Her¬ 
cules could be, a strongly-made woman who stood planted as 
firmly on her feet as an oak tree rooted in the soil where it 
has grown for two generations, a woman with square shoulders, 
large hips, and hands like a ploughman’s, and whose honesty 
was as unquestionable as her virtue. He was not dismayed by 
a martial countenance, a disfiguring wart or two, a com¬ 
plexion like burnt clay, and a pair of sinewy arms; neither 
did Nanon’s rags alarm the cooper, whose heart was not yet 
hardened against misery. He took the poor girl into his ser¬ 
vice, gave her food, clothes, shoes, and wages. Nanon found 
her hard life not intolerably hard. Nay, she secretly shed 
tears of joy at being so treated; she felt a sincere attachment 
for this master, who expected as much from her as ever feudal 
lord required of a serf. 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


23 


Nanon did all the work of the house. She did the cooking 
and the washing, carrying all the linen down to the Loire and 
bringing it back on her shoulders. She rose at daybreak and 
went to bed late. It was she who, without any assistance, 
cooked for the vintagers in the autumn, and looked sharply 
after the market-folk. She watched over her master’s prop¬ 
erty like a faithful dog, and with a blind belief in him; she 
obeyed his most arbitrary commands without a murmur—his 
whims were law to her. 

After twenty years of service, in the famous year i8ii, 
when the vintage had been gathered in after unheard-of toil 
and trouble, Grandet made up his mind to present Nanon 
with his old watch, the only gift she had ever received from 
him. She certainly had the reversion of his old shoes (which 
happened to fit her), but as a rule they were so far seen into 
already that they were of little use to any one else, and could 
not be looked upon as a present. Sheer necessity had made 
the poor girl so penurious that Grandet grew quite fond of 
her at last, and regarded her with the same sort of affection 
that a man gives to his dog; and as for Nanon, she cheer¬ 
fully wore the collar of servitude set round with spikes that 
she had ceased to feel. Grandet might stint the day’s 
allowance of bread, but she did not grumble. The fare 
might be scanty and poor, but Nanon’s spirits did not suffer, 
and her health appeared to benefit; there was never any 
illness in that house. 

And then Nanon was one of the family. She shared every 
mood of Grandet’s, laughed when he laughed, was depressed 
when he was out of spirits, took her views of the weather or 
of the temperature from him, and worked with him and for 
him. This equality was an element of sweetness which made 
up for many hardships in her lot. Out in the vineyards her 
master had never said a word about the small peaches, plums, 
or nectarines eaten under the trees that are planted between 
the rows of vines. 



24 


EUG&iYIE GRANDET. 


“ Come, Nanon, take as much as you like,” he would say, 
in years when the branches were bending beneath their load, 
and fruit was so abundant that the farmers round about were 
forced to give it to the pigs. 

For the peasant girl, for the outdoor farm servant, who had 
known nothing but harsh treatment from childhood, for the 
girl who had been rescued from starvation by charity, old 
Grandet’s equivocal laughter was like a ray of sunshine. 
Besides, Nanon’s simple nature and limited intelligence could 
only entertain one idea at a time; and during those thirty- 
five years of service one picture was constantly present to her 
mind—she saw herself a barefooted girl in rags standing at 
the gate of M. Grandet’s timber-yard, and heard the sound 
of the cooper’s voice, saying, What is it, lassie ? ” and the 
warmth of gratitude filled her heart to-day as it did then. 
Sometimes, as he watched her, the thouglit came up in 
Grandet’s mind how that no syllable of praise or admiration 
had ever been breathed in her ears, that all the tender feelings 
that a woman inspires had no existence for her, and that she 
might well appear before God one day as chaste as the Virgin 
Mary herself. And such times, prompted by a sudden impulse 
of pity, he would exclaim, “ Poor Nanon ! ” 

The remark was always followed by an indescribable look 
from the old servant. The words so spoken from time to time 
were separate links in a long and unbroken chain of friend¬ 
ship. But in this pity in the miser’s soul, which gave a thrill 
of pleasure to the lonely woman, there was something inde¬ 
scribably revolting ; it was a cold-blooded pity tliat stirred the 
cooper’s heart; it was a luxury that cost him nothing. But 
for Nanon it meant the height of happiness ! Who will not 
likewise say, “ Poor Nanon ! ” God will one day know His 
angels by the tones of their voices and by the sorrow hidden 
in their hearts. 

There were plenty of households in Saumur where servants 
were better treated, but where their employers, nevertheless, 


eug£:nie grandet 


25 


enjoyed small comfort in return. Wherefore people asked, 

What have the Grandets done to that big Nanon of theirs 
that she should be so attached to them? She would go 
through fire and water to serve them ! ’ ’ 

Her kitchen, with its barred windows that looked out into 
the yard, was always clean, cold and tidy, a thorough miser’s 
kitchen, in which nothing was allowed to be wasted. When 
Nanon had washed her plates and dishes, put the remains of 
the dinner into the safe, and raked out the fire, she left her 
kitchen (which was only separated from the dining-room by 
the breadth of a passage), and sat down to spin hemp in the 
company of her employers, for a single candle must suffice for 
the whole family in the evening. The serving-maid slept in a 
little dark closet at the end of the passage, lit only by a bor¬ 
rowed light. Nanon had an iron constitution and sound 
health, which enabled her to sleep with impunity year after 
year in this hole, where she could hear the slightest sound that 
broke the heavy silence brooding day and night over the 
house ; she lay like a watch-dog, with one ear open ; she was 
never off duty, not even while she slept. 

Some description of the rest of the house will be necessary 
in the course of the story in connection with later events ; but 
the parlor, wherein all the splendor and luxury of the house 
was concentrated, has been sketched already, and the empti¬ 
ness and bareness of the upper rooms can be surmised for the 
present. 

It was in the middle of November, in the year 1819, twi¬ 
light was coming on, and big Nanon was lighting a fire in the 
parlor for the first time. It was a festival day in the calendar 
of the Cruchotins and Grassinistes, wherefore the six antago¬ 
nists were preparing to set forth, all armed cap-a-pie, for a 
contest in which each side meant to outdo the other in proofs 
of friendship. The Grandets’ parlor was to be the scene of 
action. That morning Mme. and Mile. Grandet, duly at- 


26 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


tended by Nanon, had repaired to the parish church to hear 
mass. All Saumur had seen them go, and every one had been 
put in mind of the fact that it was Eugenie’s birthday. M. 
Cruchot, the Ahb€ Cruchot, and M. C. de Bonfons, therefore, 
having calculated the hour when dinner would be over, were 
eager to be first in the field, and to arrive before the Grassi- 
nistes to congratulate Mile. Grandet. All three carried huge 
bunches of flowers gathered in their little garden plots, but the 
stalks of the magistrate’s bouquet were ingeniously bound 
round by a white satin ribbon with a tinsel fringe at the ends. 

In the morning M. Grandet had gone to Eugenie’s room 
before she had left her bed, and had solemnly presented her 
with a rare gold coin. It was her father’s wont to surprise 
her in this way twice every year—once on her birthday, once 
on the equally memorable day of her patron saint. Mme. 
Grandet usually gave her daughter a winter or a summer dress, 
according to circumstances. The two dresses and two gold 
coins, which she received on her father’s birthday and on 
New Year’s Day, altogether amounted to an annual income 
of nearly a hundred crowns; Grandet loved to watch the 
money accumulating in her hands. He did not part with his 
money; he felt that it was only like taking it out of one box 
and putting it into another; and besides, was it not, so to 
speak, fostering a proper regard for gold in his heiress? She 
was being trained in the way in which she should go. Now 
and then he asked for an account of her wealth (formerly 
swelled by gifts from the La Bertellieres), and each time he 
did so he used to tell her, ^‘This will be your dozen when 
you are married.” 

The doz^n is an old-world custom which has lost none of its 
force, and is still religiously adhered to in several midland 
districts in France. In Berri or Anjou, when a daughter is 
married, it is incumbent upon her parents, or upon her bride¬ 
groom’s family, to give her a purse containing either a dozen, 
or twelve dozen, or twelve hundred gold or silver coins, the 


EUG&NIE GRANDE T. 


27 


amount varying with the means of the family. The poorest 
herd-girl would not be content without her doz^n when she mar¬ 
ried, even if she could only bring twelve pence as a dower. 
They talk even yet at Issoudun of a fabulous dozen once given 
to a rich heiress, which consisted of a hundred and forty-four 
Portuguese moidores; and when Catherine de Medicis was 
married to Henry II., her uncle, Clement VIL, gave the 
bride a dozen antique gold medals of priceless value. 

Eugenie wore her new dress at dinner, and looked prettier 
than usual in it; her father was in high good-humor. 

“Let us have a fire,” he cried, “as it is Eugenie’s birth¬ 
day ! It will be a good omen.” 

“Mademoiselle will be married within the year, that’s cer¬ 
tain,” said big Nanon, as she removed the remains of a goose, 
that pheasant of the coopers of Saumur. 

“There is no one that I know of in Saumur who would do 
for Eugenie,” said Mine. Grandet, with a timid glance at her 
husband, a glance that revealed how completely her husband’s 
tyranny had broken the poor woman’s spirit. 

Grandet looked at his daughter, and said merrily, “ We 
must really begin to think about.her; the little girl is twenty- 
three years old to-day.” 

Neither Eugenie nor her mother said a word, but they 
exchanged glances; they understood each other. 

Mme. Grandet’s face was thin and wrinkled and yellow as 
saffron; she was awkward and slow in her movements, one 
of those beings who seem born to be tyrannized over. She 
was a large-boned woman, with a large nose, large eyes, and 
a prominent forehead ; there seemed to be, at first sight, some 
dim suggestion of a resemblance between her and some shriv¬ 
eled, spongy, dried-up fruit. The few teeth that remained to 
her were dark and discolored; there were deep lines fretted 
about her mouth, and her chin was something after the “nut¬ 
cracker” pattern. She was a good sort of a woman, and a 
La Bertelliere to the backbone. The Abbe Cruchot had more 


28 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


than once found occasion to tell her that she had not been so 
bad looking when she was young, and she did not disagree 
with him. An angelic sweetness of disposition, the helpless 
meekness of an insect in the hands of cruel children, a sin¬ 
cere piety, a kindly heart, and an even temper that nothing 
could ruffle or sour, had gained universal respect and pity for her. 

Her appearance might provoke a smile, but she had brought 
her husband more than three hundred thousand francs, partly 
as her dowry, partly through bequests. Yet Grandet never 
gave his wife more than six francs at a time for pocket-money, 
and she always regarded herself as dependent upon her hus¬ 
band. The meek gentleness of her nature forbade any revolt 
against his tyranny; but so deeply did she feel the humiliation 
of her position that she never asked him for a sou, and when 
M. Cruchot demanded her signature to any document, she 
always gave it without a word. This foolish sensitive pride, 
which Grandet constantly and unwittingly hurt, this magna¬ 
nimity which he was quite incapable of understanding, were 
Mme. Grandet’s dominant characteristics. 

Her dress never varied. Her gown was always of the same 
dull, greenish shade of laventine, and usually lasted her nearly 
a twelvemonth; the large handkerchief at her throat was of some 
kind of cotton material; she wore a straw bonnet, and was seldom 
seen without a black silk apron. She left the house so rarely 
that her walking shoes were seldom worn out; indeed, her 
requirements were very few, she never wanted anything for 
herself. Sometimes it would occur to Grandet that it was a 
long while since he had given the last six francs to his wife, 
and his conscience would prick him a little; and after the 
vintage, when he sold his wine, he always demanded pin- 
money for his wife over and above the bargain. These four 
or five louis out of the pockets of the Dutch or Belgian mer¬ 
chants were Mme. Grandet’s only certain source of yearly 
income. But although she received her five louis, her husband 
would ofteri say to her, as if they had one common purse, 


eugAnie grandet. 


29 


** Have you a few sous that you can lend me? ” and she, poor 
woman, glad that it was in her power to do anything for the 
man whom her confessor always taught her to regard as her 
lord and master, used to return to him more than one crown 
out of her little store in the course of the winter. Every 
month, when Grandet disbursed the five-franc piece which he 
allowed his daughter for needles, thread, and small expenses 
of dress, he remarked to his wife (after he had buttoned up 
his pocket), ‘‘And how about you, mother; do you want 
anything?” And with a mother’s dignity Mme. Grandet 
would answer, “We will talk about that by-and-by, dear.’* 

Her magnanimity was entirely lost upon Grandet; he 
considered that he did very handsomely by his wife. The 
philosophic mind, contemplating the Nanons, the Mme. Gran- 
dets, the Eugenies of this life, holds that the Author of the 
universe is a profound satirist, and who will quarrel with the 
conclusion of the philosophic mind? After the dinner, when 
the question of Eugenie’s marriage had been raised for the 
first time, Nanon went up to M. Grandet’s room to fetch a 
bottle of black-currant cordial, and very nearly lost her footing 
on the staircase as she came down. 

“ Great stupid ! Are you going to take to tumbling about ? ” 
inquired her master. 

“It is all along of the step, sir; it gave way. The staircase 
isn’t safe.” 

“She is quite right,” said Mme. Grandet. “You ought 
to have had it mended long ago. Eugenie all but sprained 
her foot on it yesterday.” 

“ Here,” said Grandet, who saw that Nanon looked very 
pale, “as to-day is Eugenie’s birthday, and you have nearly 
fallen downstairs, take a drop of black-currant cordial ; that 
will put you right again.” 

“ I deserve it, too, upon my word,” said Nanon. “ Many a 
one would have broken the bottle in my place ; I should have 
broken my elbow first, holding it up to save it.” 


30 


EUG^INIE GRANDEE 


‘‘ Poor Nanon ! ” muttered Grandet, pouring out the black¬ 
currant cordial for her. 

“ Did you hurt yourself? ” asked Eugenie, looking at her 
in concern. 

No, I managed to break the fall; I came down on my 
side.” 

<< Well,” said Grandet, as to-day is Eugenie’s birthday, 

I will mend your step for you. Somehow, you women-folk 
cannot manage to put your foot down in the corner, where it 
is still solid and safe.” 

Grandet took up the candle, left the three women without 
any other illumination in the room than the bright dancing 
firelight, and went to the bakehouse, where tools, nails, and 
odd pieces of wood were kept. 

“ Do you want any help? ” Nanon called to him, when the 
first blow sounded on the staircase. 

“No I no! I am an old hand at it,” answered the 
cooper. 

At this very moment, while Grandet was doing the repairs 
himself to his worm-eaten staircase, and whistling with all his 
might as memories of his young days came up in his mind, 
the three Cruchots knocked at the house-door. 

“ Oh, it’s you, is it, M. Cruchot? ” asked Nanon, as she 
took a look through the small square grating. 

Yes,” answered the magistrate. 

Nanon opened the door, and the glow of the firelight shone 
on the three Cruchots, who were groping in the archway. 

Oh ! you have come to help us keep her birthday,” 
Nanon said, as the scent of flowers reached her. 

‘‘Excuse me a moment, gentlemen,” cried Grandet, who 
recognized the voices of his acquaintances; “I am your very 
humble servant ! There is no pride about me; I am patching 
up a broken stair here myself.” 

“Go on, go on, M. Grandet! The charcoal burner is 
mayor in his own house,” said the magistrate sententioilsly. 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


31 


Nobody saw the allusion, and he had his laugh all to himself. 
Mme. and Mile. Grandet rose to greet them. The magistrate 
took advantage of the darkness to speak to Eugenie. 

Will you permit me, mademoiselle, on the anniversary of 
your birthday, to wish you a long succession of prosperous 
years, and may you for long preserve the health with which 
you are blessed at present.” 

He then offered her such a bouquet of flowers as was seldom 
seen in Saumur; and, taking the heiress by both arms, gave her 
a kiss on either side of the throat, a fervent salute which 
brought the color into Eugenie’s face. The magistrate was 
tall and thin, somewhat resembling a rusty nail; this was his 
notion of paying court. 

“ Do not disturb yourselves,” said Grandet, coming back 
into the room. “ Fine doings these of yours, M. le President, 
on high days and holidays ! ” 

“ With mademoiselle beside him every day would be a 
holiday for my nephew,” answered the Abb6 Cruchot, also 
armed with a bouquet; and with that the Abb6 kissed 
Eugenie’s hand. As for M. Cruchot, he kissed her uncere¬ 
moniously on both cheeks, saying, “ This sort of thing makes 
us feel older, eh? A whole year older every twelve months.” 

Grandet set down the candle in front of the brass clock on 
the chimney-piece; whenever a joke amused him he kept on 
repeating it till it was worn threadbare; he did so now. 

As to-day is Eugenie’s birthday,” he said, ^‘let us have 
an illumination.” 

He carefully removed the branches from the two sconces, 
fitted the sockets into either pedestal, took from Nanon’s 
hands a whole new candle wrapped in a scrap of paper, fixed 
it firmly in the socket, and lighted it. Then he went over to 
his wife and took up his position beside her, looking by turns 
at his daughter, his friends, and the two lighted candles. 

The Abbe Cruchot was a fat, dumpy little man with a well- 
worn sandy peruke. His peculiar type of face might have be- 


32 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


longed to some old lady whose life is spent at the card-table. 
At this moment he was stretching out his feet and displaying a 
very neat and strong pair of shoes with silver buckles on them. 

‘‘ The des Grassins have not come round ? ” he asked. 

“Not yet/’ answered Grandet. 

“Are they sure to come?” put in the old notary, with 
various contortions of a countenance as full of holes as a 
colander. 

“ Oh ! yes, I think they will come,” said Mme. Grandet. 

“Is the vintage over?” asked President de Bonfons, ad¬ 
dressing Grandet; “ are all your grapes gathered ? ” 

“Yes, everywhere ! ” answered the old vine-grower, rising 
and walking up and down the length of the room; he straight¬ 
ened himself up as he spoke with a conscious pride that ap¬ 
peared in that word “ everywhere.” 

As he passed by the door that opened into the passage, 
Grandet caught a glimpse of the kitchen; the fire was still 
alight, a candle was burning there, and big Nanon was about 
to begin her spinning by the hearth; she did not wish to 
intrude upon the birthday party. 

“Nanon!” he called, stepping out into the passage. 
“ Nanon I why ever don’t you rake out the fire; put out the 
candle and come in here! Pardieu! the room is large 
enough to hold us all.” 

“But you are expecting grand visitors, sir.” 

“Have you any objection to them? They are all de¬ 
scended from Adam just as much as you are.” 

Grandet went back to the president. 

“ Have you sold your wine? ” he inquired. 

“ Not I; I am holding it. If the wine is good now, it will 
be better still in two years’ time. The growers, as you know, 
of course, are in a ring, and mean to keep prices up. The 
Belgians shall not have it all their own way this year. And 
if they go away, well and good, let them go; they will come 
back again.” 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


33 


*^Yes; but we must hold firm,” said Grandet in a tone 
that made the magistrate shudder. 

Suppose he should sell his wine behind our backs?” he 
thought. 

At that moment another knock at the door announced the 
des Grassins, and interrupted a quiet talk between Mme. 
Grandet and the Abbe Cruchot. 

Mme. des Grassins was a dumpy, lively, little person with 
a pink-and-white complexion, one of those women for whom 
the course of life in a country town has flowed on with almost 
claustral tranquillity, and who, thanks to this regular and 
virtuous existence, are still youthful at the age of forty. They 
are something like the late roses in autumn, which are fair 
and pleasant to the sight, but the almost scentless petals have 
a pinched look, there is a vague suggestion of coming winter 
about them. She dressed tolerably well, her gowns came from 
Paris, she was a leader of society in Saumur, and received on 
certain evenings. Her husband had been a quartermaster in 
the Imperial Guard, but he had retired from the army with a 
pension, after being badly wounded at Austerlitz. In spite 
of his consideration for Grandet, he still retained, or affected 
to retain, the bluff manners of a soldier. 

Good-day, Grandet,” he said, holding out his hand to 
the cooper with that wonted air of superiority with which he 
eclipsed the Cruchot faction. ^^Mademoiselle,” he added, 
addressing Eug6nie, after a bow to Mme. Grandet, “ you are 
always charming, ever good and fair, and what more can one 
wish you ? ” 

With that he presented her with a small box, which a 
servant was carrying, and which contained a Cape heath, a 
plant only recently introduced into Europe, and very rare. 

Mme. des Grassins embraced Eugenie very affectionately, 
squeezed her hand, and said, ‘‘I have commissioned Adolphe 
to give you my little birthday gift.” 

A tall, fair-haired young man, somewhat pallid and weakly 
3 


34 


EUGENIE GRANDEi: 


in appearance, came forward at this; his manners were pass¬ 
ably good, although he seemed to be shy. He had just com¬ 
pleted his law studies in Paris, where he had managed to 
spend eight or ten thousand francs over and above his allow¬ 
ance. He now kissed Eugenie on both cheeks, and laid a 
workbox with gilded silver fittings before her; it was a showy, 
trumpery thing enough, in spite of the little shield on the lid, 
on which an E. G. had been engraved in Gothic characters, a 
detail which gave an imposing air to the whole. Eugenie 
raised the lid with a little thrill of pleasure, the happiness was 
as complete as it was unlooked for—the happiness that brings 
bright color into a young girl’s face and makes her tremble 
with delight. Her eyes turned to her father as if to ask 
whether she might accept the gift; M. Grandet answered the 
mute inquiry with a ‘‘Take it, my daughter! ” in tones which 
would have made the reputation of an actor. The three Cru- 
chots stood dumfounded when they saw the bright, de¬ 
lighted glance that Adolphe des Grassins received from 
the heiress, who seemed to be dazzled by such undreamed-of 
splendors. 

M. des Grassins offered his snuff-box to Grandet, took a 
pinch himself, brushed off a few stray specks from his blue 
coat and from the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his but¬ 
ton-hole, and looked at the Cruchots, as though to say, “ Parry 
that thrust if you can ! ” Mme. des Grassins’ eyes fell on the 
blue glass jars in which the Cruchots’ bouquets had been set. 
She looked at their gifts with the innocent air of pretended 
interest which a satirical woman knows how to assume upon 
occasion. It was a delicate crisis. The Abbe got up and left 
the others, who were forming a circle round the fire, and 
joined Grandet in his promenade up and down the room. 
When the two elders had reached the embrasure of the win¬ 
dow at the farther end, away from the group by the fire, the 
priest said in the miser’s ear, “Those people yonder are 
throwing their money out of the windows.” 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


35 


*‘What does that matter to me, so long as it comes my 
way ? ” the old vine-grower answered. 

“If you had a mind to give your daughter golden scissors, 
you could very well afford it,” said the Abbe. 

“ I shall give her something better than scissors,” Grandet 
answered. 

“ What an idiot my nephew is ! ” thought the Abbe, as he 
looked at the magistrate, whose dark, ill-favored countenance 
was set off to perfection at that moment by a shock head of 
hair. “Why couldn’t he have hit on some expensive piece 
of foolery ? ” 

“We will take a hand at cards, Mme. Grandet,” said Mme. 
des Grassins. 

“But as we are all here, there are enough of us for two 
tables-” 

“As to-day is Eugenie’s birthday, why not all play to¬ 
gether at loto?” said old Grandet; “these two children 
could join in the game.” 

The old cooper, who never played at any game whatever, 
pointed to his daughter and Adolphe. 

“ Here, Nanon, move the tables out.” 

“We will help you. Mademoiselle Nanon,” said Mme. des 
Grassins cheerfully; she was thoroughly pleased, because she 
had pleased Eugenie. 

“I have never seen anything so pretty anywhere,” the 
heiress had said to her. “ I have never been so happy in my 
life before.” 

“It was Adolphe who chose it,” said Mme. des Grassins 
in the girl’s ear; “he brought it from Paris.” 

“Go your ways, accursed scheming woman,” muttered the 
magistrate to himself. “If you or your husband ever find 
yourselves in a court of law, you shall be hard put to it to 
gain the day.” 

The notary, calmly seated in his corner, watched the Abbd, 
and said to himself, “ The des Grassins may do what they like; 



36 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


my fortune and my brother’s and my nephew’s fortunes alto¬ 
gether mount up to eleven hundred thousand francs. The des 
Grassins, at the very utmost, have only half as much, and they 
have a daughter. Let them give whatever they like, all will 
be ours some day—the heiress and her presents too.” 

Two tables were in readiness by half-past eight o’clock. 
Mme. de Grassins, with her winning ways, had succeeded in 
placing her son next to Eugdnie. The actors in the scene, 
so commonplace in appearance, so full of interest beneath the 
surface, each provided with slips of pasteboard of various col¬ 
ors and blue glass counters, seemed to be listening to the little 
jokes made by the old notary, who never drew a number 
without making some remark upon it, but they were all think¬ 
ing of M. Grandet’s millions. The old cooper himself eyed 
the group with a certain self-complacency ; he looked at Mme. 
des Grassins with her pink feathers and her fresh toilet, at the 
banker’s soldierly face, at Adolphe, at the magistrate, at the 
Abb6 and the notary, and within himself he said: ‘‘They 
are all after my crowns; that is what they are here for. It 
is for my daughter that they come to be bored here. Aha! 
and my daughter is for none of them, and all these people 
are so many harpoons to be used in my fishing.” 

The merriment of this family party, the laughter, only 
sincere when it came from Eugenie or her mother, and to 
which the low whirring of Nanon’s spinning-wheel made 
an accompaniment, the sordid meanness playing for high 
stakes, the young girl herself, like some rare bird, the in¬ 
nocent victim of its high value, tracked down and snared 
by specious pretenses of friendship; taken altogether, it was 
a sorry comedy that was being played in the old gray-painted 
parlor, by the dim light of the two candles. Was it not, 
however, a drama of all time, played out everywhere all over 
the world, but here reduced to its simplest expression ? Old 
Grandet towered above the other actors, turning all this sham 
affection to his own account, and reaping a rich harvest from 


EUGENIE GRANDET, 


37 


this simulated friendship. His face hovered above the scene 
like the interpretation of an evil dream. He was like the 
incarnation of the one god who yet finds worshipers in mod¬ 
ern times, of money and the power of wealth. 

With him the gentler and sweeter impulses of human life 
only occupied the second place; but they so filled three purer 
hearts there that there was no room in them for other 
thoughts—the hearts of Nation, and of Eugenie and her 
mother. And yet, how much ignorance mingled with their 
innocent simplicity ! Eugenie and her mother knew nothing 
of Grandet’s wealth ; they saw everything through a medium 
of dim ideas, peculiar to their own narrow world, and neither 
desired nor despised money, accustomed as they were to do 
without it. Nor were they conscious of an uncongenial at¬ 
mosphere ; the strength of their feelings, their inner life, made 
of them a strange exception in this gathering, wholly intent 
upon material interests. Appalling is the condition of man; 
there is no drop of happiness in his lot but has its source 
in ignorance. 

Just as Mme. Grandet had won sixteen sous, the largest 
amount that had ever been punted beneath that roof, and big 
Nanon was beaming with delight at the sight of Madame 
pocketing that splendid sum, there was a knock at the house- 
door, so sudden and so loud that it startled the women for 
the moment. 

No one in Saumur would knock in that way ! ” said the 
notary. 

“What do they thump like that for ? ” said Nanon. “ Do 
they want to break our door down ? ” 

“ Who the devil is it?” cried Grandet. 

Nanon took up one of the two candles and went to open 
the door. Grandet followed her. 

“Grandet! Grandet!” cried his wife; a vague terror 
seized her, and she hurried to the door of the room. 

The players all looked at each other. 


38 


EUGENIE GRANDEE 


** Suppose we go too?” said M. des Grassins. ‘‘That 
knock means no good, it seemed to me.” 

But M. des Grassins scarcely caught a glimpse of a young 
man’s face and of a porter who was carrying two huge trunks 
and an assortment of carpet bags, before Grandet turned 
sharply on his wife and said— 

“ Go back to your loto, Mme. Grandet, and leave me to 
settle with this gentleman here.” 

With that he slammed the parlor door, and the loto players 
sat down again, but they were too much excited to go on with 
the game. 

“Is it any one who lives in Saumur, M. des Grassins?” 
his wife inquired. 

“ No, a traveler.” 

“ Then he must have come from Paris.” 

“As a matter of fact,” said the notary, drawing out a 
heavy antique watch, a couple of fingers’ breadth in thickness, 
and not unlike a Dutch punt in shape, “ as a matter of fact, 
it is nine o’clock. Peste / the mail-coach is not often behind 
time.” 

“ Is he young looking? ” put in the Abbe Cruchot. 

“ Yes,” answered M. des Grassins. “ The luggage he has 
with him must weigh three hundred kilos at least.” 

“ Nanon does not come back,” said Eugenie. 

“It must be some relation of yours,” the president re¬ 
marked. 

“Let us put down our stakes,” said Mme. Grandet gently. 
“ M. Grandet was vexed, I could tell that by the sound of his 
voice, and perhaps he would be displeased if he came in and 
found us all discussing his affairs.” 

“Mademoiselle,” Adolphe addressed his neighbor, “it 
will be your cousin Grandet no doubt, a very nice-looking 
young fellow whom I once met at a ball at M. de Nucin- 
gen’s.” 

Adolphe went no further, his mother stamped on his foot 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


39 


under the table. Aloud, she asked him for two sous for his 
stake, adding in an undertone, meant only for his ears, 
“Will you hold your tongue, you great silly! 

They could hear the footsteps of Nanon and the porter on 
the staircase, but Grandet returned to the room almost imme¬ 
diately, and just behind him came the traveler who had 
excited so much curiosity, and loomed so large in the imagina¬ 
tions of those assembled; indeed, his sudden descent into 
their midst might be compared to the arrival of a snail in a 
beehive, or the entrance of a peacock into some humdrum 
village poultry-yard. 

Take a seat near the fire,” said Grandet, addressing the 
stranger. 

The young man looked round the room and bowed very 
gracefully before seating himself. The men rose and bowed 
politely in return, the women courtesied rather ceremoniously. 

“You are feeling cold, I expect, sir,” said Mme. Grandet; 
“ you have no doubt come from-” 

“Just like the women ! ” broke in the good man, looking 
up from the letter which he held in his hand. “ Do let the 
gentleman have a little peace.” 

“But, father, perhaps the gentleman wants something after 
his journey,” said Eugenie. 

“ He has a tongue in his head,” the vine-grower answered 
severely. 

The stranger alone felt any surprise at this scene, the rest 
were quite used to the worthy man and his arbitrary behavior. 
But after the two inquiries had received the summary answers, 
the stranger rose and stood with his back to the fire, held out 
a foot to the blaze, so as to warm the soles of his boots, and 
said to Eugenie, “ Thank you, cousin, I dined at Tours. And 
I do not require anything,” he added, glancing at Grandet; 
“ I am not in the least tired.” 

“Do you come from Paris?” (it was Mme. des Grassins 
who now put the inquiry). 



40 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


M. Charles (for this was the name borne by the son of M. 
Grandet of Paris), hearing some one question him, took out an 
eyeglass that hung suspended from his neck by a cord, fixed it 
in his eye, made a deliberate survey of the objects upon the 
table and of the people sitting round it, eyed Mme. des 
Grassins very coolly, and said (when he had completed his 
survey), ‘‘Yes, madame. You are playing at loto, aunt,” he 
added; “ pray go on with your game, it is too amusing to be 
broken off-” 

“I knew it was the cousin,” thought Mme. des Grassins, 
and she gave him a side glance from time to time. 

“ Forty-seven,” cried the old Abbe. “ Keep count. Mme. 
des Grassins, that is your number, is it not? ” 

M. des Grassins put down a counter on his wife’s card; the 
lady herself was not thinking of loto, her mind was full of 
melancholy forebodings, she was watching Eugenie and the 
cousin from Paris. She saw how the heiress now and then 
stole a glance at her cousin, and the banker’s wife could easily 
discover in those glances a crescendo of amazement or of 
curiosity. 

There was certainly a strange contrast between M. Charles 
Grandet, a handsome young man of two-and-twenty, and the 
worthy provincials, who, tolerably disgusted already with his 
aristocratic airs, were scornfully studying the stranger with a 
view to making game of him. This requires some explanation. 

At two-and-twenty childhood is not so very far away, and 
youth, on the borderland, has not finally and forever put away 
childish things; Charles Grandet’s vanity was childish, but 
perhaps ninety-nine young men out of a hundred would have 
been carried away by it and behaved exactly as he did. 

Some days previously his father had bidden him to go on a 
visit of several months to his uncle in Saumur ; perhaps M. 
Grandet (of Paris) had Eugenie in his mind. Charles, 
launched in this way into a country town for the first time in 
his life, had his own ideas. He would make his appearance in 



kUGENlE CRANDRT. 


41 


provincial society with all the superiority of a young man of 
fashion ; he would reduce the neighborhood to despair by his 
splendor; he would inaugurate a new epoch, and introduce 
all the latest and most ingenious refinement of Parisian luxury. 
To be brief, he meant to devote more time at Saumur than in 
Paris to the care of his nails, and to carry out schemes of elab¬ 
orate and studied refinements in dress at his leisure ; there 
should be none of the not ungraceful negligence of attire 
which a young man of fashion sometimes affects. 

So Charles took with him into the country the most charm¬ 
ing of shooting costumes, the sweetest thing in hunting-knives 
and sheaths, and a perfect beauty of a rifle. He packed up a 
most tasteful collection of waistcoats: gray, white, black, 
beetle-green shot with gold, speckled and spangled; double 
waistcoats, waistcoats with rolled collars, stand-up collars, 
turned-down collars, open at the throat, buttoned up to the 
chin with a row of gold buttons. He took samples of all 
the ties and cravats in favor at that epoch. He took two 
of Buisson’s coats. He took his finest linen, and the dress¬ 
ing-case with gold fittings that his mother had given him. 
He took all his dandy’s paraphernalia, not forgetting an 
enchanting little writing-case, the gift of the most amiable of 
women (for him at least), a great lady whom he called Annette, 
and who at that moment was traveling with her husband in 
Scotland, a victim to suspicions which demanded the tem¬ 
porary sacrifice of her happiness. 

In short, his cargo of Parisian frivolities was as complete as 
it was possible to make it; nothing had been omitted, from 
the horsewhip, useful as a preliminary, to the pair of richly- 
chased and mounted pistols that terminate a duel. * There 
was all the ploughing gear required by a young idler in the 
field of life. 

His father had told him to travel alone and modestly, and 
he had obeyed. He had come in the coup6 of the diligence, 
which he secured all to himself; and was not ill-satisfied to 


42 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


save wear, in this way, to a smart and comfortable traveling 
carriage which he had ordered, and in which he meant to go 

to meet his Annette, the aforesaid great lady who-etc., 

and whom he was to rejoin next June at Baden-Baden. 

Charles expected to meet scores of people during his visit 
to his uncle; he expected to have some shooting on his 
uncle’s land; he expected, in short, to find a large house 
on a large estate ; he had not thought to find his relatives 
in Saumur at all; he had only found out that they lived 
there by asking the way to Froidfond, and even after this 
discovery he expected to see them in a large mansion. But 
whether his uncle lived in Saumur or at Froidfond, he was 
determined to make his first appearance properly, so he had 
assumed a most fascinating traveling costume, made with the 
simplicity that is the perfection of art,-a most adorable crea¬ 
tion, to use the word which in those days expressed superlative 
praise of the special qualities of a thing or of a man. At 
Tours he had summoned a hairdresser, and his handsome 
chestnut hair was curled afresh. He had changed his linen 
and put on a black satin cravat, which, in combination with a 
round collar, made a very becoming setting for a pale and 
satirical face. A long overcoat, fitting tightly at the waist, 
gave glimpses of a cashmere waistcoat with a rolled collar, 
and beneath this again a second waistcoat of some white 
material. His watch was carelessly thrust into a side pocket, 
and save in so far as a gold chain secured it to a button-hole, 
its continuance there appeared to be purely accidental. His 
gray trousers were buttoned at the sides, and the seams were 
adorned with designs embroidered in black silk. A pair of 
gray gloves had nothing to dread from contact with a gold¬ 
headed cane, which he managed to admiration. A discrim¬ 
inating taste was evinced throughout the costume, and shone 
conspicuous in the traveling cap. Only a Parisian, and a 
Parisian moreover from some remote and lofty sphere, could 
trick himself out in such attire, and bring all its absurd details 



EUGENIE GRANDE T. 


43 


into harmony by coxcombry carried to such a pitch that it 
ceased to be ridiculous; this young man carried it off, more- 
over, with a swaggering air befitting a dead shot, conscious 
of the possession of a handsome pair of pistols and the good 
graces of an Annette. 

If, moreover, you wish to thoroughly understand the surprise 
with which the Saumurois and the young Parisian mutually 
regarded each other, you must behold, as did the former, the 
radiant vision of this elegant traveler shining in the gloomy 
old room, as well as the figures that composed the family pic¬ 
ture that met the stranger’s eyes. There sat the Cruchots; 
try to imagine them. 

To begin with, all three took snuff, with utter disregard of 
personal cleanliness or of the black deposit with which their 
shirt frills were encrusted. Their limp silk handkerchiefs were 
twisted into a thick rope, and wound tightly about their necks. 
Their collars were crumpled and soiled, their linen was dingy; 
there was such a vast accumulation of underwear in their 
presses, that it was only necessary to wash twice in the year, 
and the linen acquired a bad color with lying by. Age and 
ugliness might have wrought together to produce a master¬ 
piece in them. Their hard-featured, furrowed, and wrinkled 
faces were in keeping with their creased and threadbare cloth¬ 
ing, and both they and their garments were worn, shrunken, 
twisted out of shape. Dwellers in country places are apt to 
grow more or less slovenly and careless of their appearance; 
they cease by degrees to dress for others; the career of a pair 
of gloves is indefinitely prolonged, there is a general want of 
freshness and a decided neglect of detail. The slovenliness 
of the Cruchots, therefore, was not conspicuous; they were 
in harmony with the rest of the company, for there was one 
point on which both Cruchotins and Grassinistes were agreed 
for the most part—they held the fashions in horror. 

The Parisian assumed his eyeglass again in order to study 
the curious accessories of the room; his eyes traveled over 


44 


£UgAnie grandet. 


the rafters in the ceiling, over the dingy panels covered with 
fly-spots in sufficient abundance to punctuate the whole of the 
“ Encyclopedie methodique ” and the ‘‘Moniteur” besides. 
The loto players looked up at this and stared at him; if a 
giraffe had been in their midst they could hardly have gazed 
with more eager curiosity. Even M. des Grassins and his son, 
who had beheld a man of fashion before in the course of their 
lives, shared in the general amazement; perhaps they felt the 
indefinable influence of the general feeling about the stranger, 
perhaps they regarded him not unapprovingly. ‘‘You see 
how they dress in Paris,” their satirical glances seemed to say 
to their neighbors. 

One and all were at liberty to watch Charles at their 
leisure, without any fear of offending the master of the house, 
for by this time Grandet was deep in a long letter which he 
held in his hand. He had taken the only candle from the 
table beside him, without any regard for the convenience of 
his guests or for their pleasure. 

It seemed to Eugenie, who had never in her life beheld 
such a paragon, that her cousin was some seraphic vision, some 
creature fallen from the skies. The perfume exhaled by those 
shining locks, so gracefully curled, was delightful to her. She 
would fain have passed her fingers over the delicate, smooth 
surface of those wonderful gloves. She envied Charles his 
little hands, his complexion, the youthful refinement of his 
features. In fact, the sight of her cousin gave her the same 
sensations of exquisite pleasure that might be aroused in a 
young man by the contemplation of the fanciful portraits of 
ladies in English “Keepsakes,” portraits drawn by Westall 
and engraved by Finden, with a burin so skillful that you fear 
to breathe upon the vellum surface lest the celestial vision 
should disappear. And yet—how should the impression pro¬ 
duced by a young exquisite upon an ignorant girl whose life 
was spent in darning stockings and mending her father’s 
clothes, in the dirty wainscoted window embrasure whence, in 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


45 


an hour, she saw scarcely one passer-by in the silent street, 
how should her dim impressions be conveyed by such an 
image as this? 

Charles drew from his pocket a handkerchief embroidered 
by the great lady who was traveling in Scotland. It was a 
dainty piece of work wrought by love, in hours that were lost 
to love; Eugenie gazed at her cousin, and wondered, was he 
really going to use it ? Charles’ manners, his way of adjusting 
his eyeglass, his superciliousness, his affectations, his manifest 
contempt for the little box which had but lately given so 
much pleasure to the wealthy heiress, and which in his eyes 
seemed to be a very absurd piece of rubbish; everything, 
in short, which had given offense to the Cruchots and the 
Grassinistes pleased Eugenie so much that she lay awake for 
long that night thinking about this phoenix of a cousin. 

Meanwhile the numbers were drawn but languidly, and very 
soon the loto came to an end altogether. Big Nanon came 
into the room and said aloud, Madame, you will have to 
give me some sheets to make the gentleman’s bed.” 

Mme. Grandet disappeared with Nanon, and Mme. des 
Grassins said in a low voice, Let us keep our sous, and give 
up the game.” 

Each player took back his coin from the chipped saucer 
which held the stakes. Then there was a general stir, and a 
wheeling movement in the direction of the fire. 

Is the game over?” inquired Grandet, still reading his 
letter. 

Yes, yes,” answered Mme. des Grassins, seating herself 
next to Charles. 

Eugenie left the room to help her mother and Nanon, 
moved by a thought that came with the vague feeling that 
stirred her heart for the first time. If she had been ques¬ 
tioned by a skillful confessor, she would have no doubt ad¬ 
mitted that her thought was neither for Nanon nor for her 
mother, but that she was seized with a restless and urgent 


46 


EUGENIE GRANDE7. 


desire to see that all was right in her cousin’s room, to busy 
herself on her cousin’s account, to see that nothing was for¬ 
gotten, to think of everything he might require, and to make 
sure that it was there, to make certain that everything was as 
neat and pretty as might be. She alone, so Eugenie thought 
already, could enter into her cousin’s ideas and understand his 
tastes. 

As a matter of fact, she came just at the right moment. 
Her mother and Nanon were about to leave the room in the 
belief that it was all in readiness; Eugenie convinced them 
in a moment that everything was yet to do. She filled 
Nanon’s head with these ideas: the sheets had not been aired, 
Nanon must bring the warming-pan, there were ashes, there 
was a fire downstairs. She herself covered the old table with 
a clean white cloth, and told Nanon to mind and be sure to 
change it every morning. There must be a good fire in the 
room; she overcame her mother’s objections, she induced 
Nanon to put a good supply of firewood outside in the pas¬ 
sage, and to say nothing about it to her father. She ran 
downstairs into the parlor, sought in one of the sideboards for 
an old japanned tray which had belonged to the late M. de la 
Bertellidre, and from the same source she procured a hexagonal 
crystal glass, a little gilt spoon with almost all the gilding 
rubbed off, and an old slender-necked glass bottle with Cupids 
engraved upon it; these she deposited in triumph on a corner 
of the chimney-piece. More ideas had crowded up in her 
mind during that one quarter of an hour than in all the years 
since she had come into the world. 

“Mamma,” she began, “he will never be able to bear 
the smell of a tallow candle. Suppose that we buy a wax 
candle?” 

She fled, lightly as a bird, to find her purse, and drew 
thence the five francs which she had received for the month’s 
expenses. 

“ Here, Nanon, be quick.” 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


47 


‘‘ But what will your father say ? ” 

This dreadful objection was raised by Mme. Grandet, when 
she saw her daughter with an old Sevres china sugar-basin 
which Grandet had brought back with him from the chateau 
at Froidfond. 

‘•'And where is the sugar to come from?” she went on. 
“ Are you mad ? ” 

“ Nanon can easily buy the sugar when she goes for the 
candle, mamma.” 

“ But how about your father ? ” 

“ Is it a right thing that his nephew should not have a 
glass of eau sucree (sugar and water) to drink if he happens to 
want it? Besides, he will not notice it.” 

“Your father always notices things,” said Mme. Grandet, 
shaking her head. 

Nanon hesitated ; she knew her master. 

“ Do go, Nanon ; it is my birthday to-day, you know I ” 

Nanon burst out laughing in spite of herself at the first 
joke her young mistress had ever been known to make, and 
did her bidding. 

While Eugenie and her mother were doing their best to 
adorn the room which M. Grandet had allotted to his nephew, 
Mme. des Grassins was bestowing her attention on Charles, 
and making abundant use of her eyes as she did so. 

“ You are very brave,” she said, “ to leave the pleasures of 
the capital in winter in order to come to stay in Saumur. 
But if you are not frightened away at first sight of us, you 
shall see that even here we can amuse ourselves.” And she 
gave him a languishing glance, in true provincial style. 

Women in the provinces are wont to affect a demure and 
staid demeanor, which gives a furtive and eager eloquence to 
their eyes, a peculiarity which may be noted in ecclesiastics, 
for whom every pleasure is stolen or forbidden. Charles was 
so thoroughly out of his element in this room, it was all so 
far removed from the great chateau and the splendid .surround- 


48 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


ings in which he had thought to find his uncle, that, on pay¬ 
ing closer attention to Mme. des Grassins, she almost re- 
minded him of Parisian faces half obliterated already by 
these strange, new impressions. He responded graciously 
to the advances which had been made to him, and naturally 
they fell into conversation. 

Mme. des Grassins gradually lowered her voice to tones 
suited to the nature of her confidences. Both she and 
Charles Grandet felt a need of mutual confidence, of explana¬ 
tions and an understanding; so after a few minutes spent in 
coquettish chatter and jests that covered a serious purpose, the 
wily provincial dame felt free to converse without fear of being 
overheard, under cover of a conversation on the sale of the 
vintage, the one all-absorbing topic at that moment in 
Saumur. 

“If you will honor us with a visit,” she said, “you will 
certainly do us a pleasure; my husband and I shall be very 
glad to see you. Our salon is the only one in Saumur where 
you will meet both the wealthy merchant society and the 
noblesse. We ourselves belong in a manner to both ; they do 
not mix with each other at all except at our house ; they come 
to us because they find it amusing. My husband, I am proud 
to say, is very highly thought of in both circles. So we will 
do our best to beguile the tedium of your stay. If you are 
going to remain with the Grandets, what will become of you ! 
Bon Dieu / Your uncle is a miser, his mind runs on nothing 
but his vine-cuttings; your aunt is a saint who cannot put 
two ideas together; and your cousin is a silly little thing, a 
common sort of girl, with no breeding and no money, who 
spends her life in mending dish-cloths.” 

“ *Tis a very pretty woman,” said Charles to himself; 
Mme. des Grassins* coquettish glances had not been thrown 
away upon him. 

“ It seems to me that you mean to monopolize the gentle¬ 
man,** said the big banker, laughing, to his wife, an unlucky 


EUGENIE GRANDE T, 


4d 

observation, followed by remarks more or less spiteful from 
the notary and the president; but the Abbe gave them a 
shrewd glance, took a pinch of snuff, and handed his snuff¬ 
box to the company, while he gave expression to their 
thoughts, “Where could the gentleman have found any one 
better qualified to do the honors of Saumur?” he said. 

“Come, Abb6, what do you mean by that?” asked M. 
des Grassins. 

“It is meant, sir, in the most flattering sense for you, for 
madame, for the town of Saumur, and for this gentleman,” 
added the shrewd ecclesiastic, turning towards Charles. 
Without appearing to pay the slightest heed to their talk, he 
had managed to guess the drift of it. 

Adolphe des Grassins spoke at last, with what was meant to 
be an off-hand manner. “ I do not know,” he said, address¬ 
ing Charles, “whether you have any recollection of me; I 
once had the pleasure of dancing in the same quadrille at a 
ball given by M. le Baron de Nucingen, and-” 

“ I remember it perfectly,” answered Charles, surprised to 
find himself the object of general attention. 

“ Is this gentleman your son ? ” he asked of Mme. des 
Grassins. 

The Ahh6 gave her a spiteful glance. 

“ Yes, I am his mother,” she answered. 

“You must have been very young when you came to 
Paris? ” Charles went on, speaking to Adolphe. 

“We cannot help ourselves, sir,” said the Abb6. “Our 
babes are scarcely weaned before we send them to Babylon.” 

Mme. des Grassins gave the Abbe a strangely penetrating 
glance; she seemed to be seeking the meaning of those words. 

“You must go into the country,” the Abbe went on, “ if 
you want to find women not much on the other side of thirty, 
with a grown-up son a licentiate of law, who look as fresh and 
youthful as Mme. des Grassins. It only seems like the other 
day when the young men and the ladies stood on chairs to see 
4 


50 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


you dance, raadame,” the Abbe added, turning towards his 
fair antagonist; “your triumphs areas fresh in my memory 
as if they had happened yesterday.” 

“Oh ! the old wretch ! ” said Mme. des Grassins to her¬ 
self, “is it possible that he has guessed? ” 

“It looks as though I should have a great success in 
Saumur,” thought Charles. He unbuttoned his overcoat and 
stood with his hands in his waistcoat pocket, gazing into 
space, striking the attitude which Chantrey thought fit to 
give to Byron in his statue of that poet. 

Meanwhile Grandet’s inattention, or rather his preoccupa¬ 
tion, during the reading of his letter had escaped neither the 
notary nor the magistrate. Both of them tried to guess at 
the contents by watching the almost imperceptible changes in 
the worthy man’s face, on which all the light of a candle was 
concentrated. The vine-grower was hard put to it to preserve 
his wonted composure. His expression must be left to the 
imagination, but here is the fatal letter: 

“ My Brother: —It is nearly twenty-three years now since 
we saw each other. The last time we met it was to make 
arrangements for my marriage, and we parted in high spirits. 
Little did I then think, when you were congratulating your¬ 
self on our prosperity, that one day you would be the sole 
hope and stay of our family. By the time that this letter reaches 
your hands, I shall be no more. In my position, I could not 
survive the disgrace of bankruptcy; I have held up my head 
above the surface till the last moment, hoping to weather the 
storm; it is all of no use, I must sink now. Just after the 
failure of my stockbroker came the failure of Roguin (my 
notary); my last resources have been swept away, and I have 
nothing left. It is my heavy misfortune to owe nearly four 
millions; my assets only amount to twenty-five per cent, of 
my debts. I hold heavy stocks of wine, and, owing to the 
abundance and good quality of your vintages, they have fallen 


EUGENIE GRANDE T. 


51 


ruinously in value. In three days’ time all Paris will say, 
‘ M. Grandet was a rogue ! ’ and I, honest though I am, shall 
lie wrapped in a winding sheet of infamy. I have despoiled 
my own son of his mother’s fortune and of the spotless name 
on which I have brought disgrace. He knows nothing of all 
this—the unhappy child whom I have idolized. Happily for 
him, he did not know when we bade each other good-bye, 
and my heart overflowed with tenderness for him, how soon 
it should cease to beat. Will he not curse me some day? 
Oh ! my brother, my brother, a child’s curse is an awful 
thing ! If we curse our children, they may appeal against us, 
but their curses cling to us for ever ! Grandet, you are my 
older brother, you must shield me from this; do not let 
Charles say bitter things of me when I am lying in my grave. 
Oh! my brother, if every word in this letter were written in 
my tears, in my blood, it would not cost me such bitter 
anguish, for then I should be weeping, bleeding, dying, and 
the agony would be ended; but now I am still suffering—I 
see the death before me with dry eyes. You therefore are 
Charles’ father now ! He has no relations on his mother’s 
side for reasons which you know. Why did I not defer to 
social prejudices? Why did I yield to love? Why did I 
marry the natural daughter of a noble ? Charles is the last 
of his family ; he is alone in the world. Oh ! my unhappy 

boy, my son !- Listen, Grandet, I am asking nothing for 

myself, and you could scarcely satisfy my creditors if you 
would; your fortune cannot be sufficient to meet a demand 
of three millions ; it is for my son’s sake that I write. You 
must know, my brother, that as I think of you my petition is 
made with clasped hands; that this is my dying prayer to you. 
Grandet, I know that you will be a father to him; I know 
that I shall not ask in vain, and the sight of my pistols does 
not cause me a pang. 

And then Charles is very fond of me; I was kind to him, 
I never said him nay; he will not curse me! For the rest. 



62 


MUGENIE GRANDET. 


you will see how sweet-tempered and obedient he is; he takes 
after his mother; he will never give you any trouble, poor 
boy ! He is accustomed to luxurious ways ; he knows noth¬ 
ing of the hardships that you and I experienced in the early 

days when we were poor- And now he has not a penny, 

and he is alone in the world, for all his friends are sure to 
leave him, and it is I who have brought these humiliations 
upon him. Ah ! if I had only the power to send him straight 
to heaven now, where his mother is ! This is madness ! To 
go back to my misfortunes and Charles’ share in them. I 
have sent him to you so that you may break the news of my 
death and explain to him what his future must be. Be a father 
to him; ah ! more than that, be an indulgent father! Do 
not expect him to give up his idle ways all at once; it would 
kill him. On my knees I beg him to renounce all claims to 
his mother’s fortune; but I need not ask that of him, his 
sense of honor will prevent him from adding himself to the 
list of my creditors; see that he resigns his claims when the 
right time comes. And you must lay everything before him, 
Grandet—the struggle and the hardships that he will have to 
face in the life that I have spoiled for him; and then if he 
has any tenderness still left for. me, tell him from me that all 
is not lost for him—be sure you tell him that. Work, which 
was our salvation, can restore the fortune which I have lost; 
and if he will listen to his father’s voice, which would fain 
make itself heard yet a little while from the grave, let him 
leave this country and go to the Indies ! And, brother, Charles 
is honest and energetic; you will help him with his first trad¬ 
ing venture, I know you will; he would die sooner than not 
repay you; you will do as much as that for him, Grandet, or 
you will lay up regrets for yourself. Ah ! if my boy finds no 
kindness and no help in you, I shall for ever pray God to 
punish your hard-heartedness. If I could have withheld a few 
payments, I might have saved a little sum for him—he surely 
has a right to some of his mother’s fortune—but the payments 



EUGENIE GEANDET. 


53 


at the end of the month taxed all my resources, and I could 
not manage it. I would fain have died with my mind at rest 
about his future; I wish I could have received your solemn 
promise, coming straight from your hand it would have brought 
warmth with it for me; but time presses. Even while Charles 
is on his way, I am compelled to file my schedule. My affairs 
are all in order; I am endeavoring so to arrange everything 
that it will be evident that my failure is due neither to care¬ 
lessness nor to dishonesty, but simply to disasters which I 
could not help. Is it not for Charles’ sake that I take these 
pains? Farewell, my brother. May God bless you in every 
way for the generosity with which you (as I cannot doubt) will 
accept and fulfill this trust. There will be one voice that will 
never cease to pray for you in the world whither we must all 
go sooner or later, and where I am even now. 

Victor-Ange-Guillaume Grandet.” 

So you are having a chat ? ” said old Grandet, folding up 
the letter carefully in the original creases, and putting it into 
his waistcoat pocket. 

He looked at his nephew in a shy and embarrassed way, 
seeking to dissemble his feelings and his calculations. 

Do you feel warmer ? ” 

I am very comfortable, my dear uncle.” 

Well, whatever are the women after ? ” his uncle went on ; 
the fact that his nephew would sleep in the house had by that 
time slipped from his memory. Eugenie and Mme. Grandet 
came into the room as he spoke. 

Is everything ready upstairs?” the good man inquired. 
He had now quite recovered himself, and recollected the facts 
of the case. 

Yes, father.” 

‘‘Very well then, nephew, if you are feeling tired, Nanon 
will show you to your room. Lord ! there is nothing very 
smart about it, but you will overlook that here among poor 


54 


EUGENIE GRANDE T. 


vine-growers, who never have a penny to bless themselves 
with. The taxes swallow up everything we have.” 

“ We don’t want to be intrusive, Grandet,” said the banker. 
“ You and your nephew may have some things to talk over ; 
we will wish you good-evening. Good-bye till to-morrow.” 

Every one rose at this, and took leave after their several 
fashions. The old notary went out under the archway to look 
for his lantern, lighted it, and offered to see the des Grassins 
to their house. Mme. des Grassins had not been prepared 
for the event which had brought the evening so early to a 
close, and her maid had not appeared. 

“ Will you honor me by taking my arm, madame?” said 
the Abbe Cruchot, addressing Mme. des Grassins. 

‘‘Thank you, M. I’Abbe,” said the lady drily; “ my son 
is with me.” 

“ I am not a compromising acquaintance for a lady,” the 
Abbe continued. 

“ Take M. Cruchot’s arm,” said her husband. 

The Abbe, with the fair lady on his arm, walked on quickly 
for several paces, so as to put a distance between them and the 
rest of the party. 

“ That young man is very good-looking, madame,” he said, 
with a pressure on her arm to give emphasis to the remark. 
“ ’Tis good-bye to the baskets, the vintage is over ! You must 
give up Mile. Grandet; Eugenie is meant for her cousin. 
Unless he happens to be smitten with some fair face in Paris, 
your son Adolphe will have yet another rival-” 

“Nonsense, M. I’Abb^.” 

“It will not be long before the young man will find out 
that Eugenie is a girl who has nothing to say for herself; and 
she has gone off in looks. Did you notice her ? She was as 
yellow as a quince this evening.” 

“ Which, possibly, you have already pointed out to her 
cousin ? ” 

“ Indeed, I have not taken the trouble-” 




EUGENIE GRANDET. 


55 


“ If you always sit beside Eugenie, madame,” interrupted 
the Abb6, “you will not need to tell the young man much 
about his cousin; he can make his own comparisons.” 

“ He promised me at once to come to dine with us the day 
after to-morrow.” 

“ Ah ! madame,” said the Abbe, “ if you would only-” 

“ Would only what, M. I’Abbe? Do you mean to put evil 
suggestions into my mind ? I have not come to the age of 
thirty-nine with a spotless reputation (heaven be thanked) to 
compromise myself now—not for the empire of the Great 
Mogul ! We are both of us old enough to know what that 
kind of talk means; and I must say that your ideas do not 
square very well with your sacred calling. For shame I this 
is worthy of ‘ Faublas.’ ” 

“ So you have read ^ Faublas ? ’ ” 

“No, M. TAbb^; ^ Les Liaisons dangereuses ’ (dangerous 
entanglements) is what I meant to say.” 

“ Oh ! that book is infinitely more moral,” said the Abb6, 
laughing. “ But you would make me out to be as depraved 
as young men are nowadays. I only meant that you- 

“ Do you dare to tell me that you meant no harm ? The 
thing is plain enough. If that young fellow (who certainly is 
good-looking, that I grant you) paid court to me, it would 
not be for the sake of my interest with that cousin of his. 
In Paris, I know, there are tender mothers who sacrifice them¬ 
selves thus for their children’s happiness and welfare, but we 
are not in Paris, M. I’Abb^.” 

“No, madame.” 

“And,” continued she, “neither Adolphe nor I would 
purchase a hundred millions at such a price.” 

“ Madame, I said nothing about a hundred millions. Per¬ 
haps such a temptation might have been too much for either 
of us. Still, in my opinion, an honest woman may indulge 
in a little harmless coquetry, in the strictest propriety; it is 
a part of her social duties, and-” 




56 


EUGENIE GRANDET 


“ Do you think so ? ” 

*‘Do we not owe it to ourselves, madame, to endeavor to 

be as agreeable as possible to others?-Permit me to blow 

my nose. Take my word for it, madame,” resumed the 
Abb6, “that he certainly regarded you with rather more 
admiration than he saw fit to bestow on me, but I can forgive 
him for honoring beauty rather than gray hairs-” 

“It is perfectly clear,” said the president in his thick voice, 
“why M. Grandet of Paris is sending his son to Saumur j he 
has made up his mind to make a match-” 

“Then why should the cousin have dropped from the skies 
like this?” answered the notary. 

“ There is nothing in that,” remarked M. des Grassins, 
“ old Grandet is so close.” 

“Des Grassins,” said his wife, “I have asked that young 
man to come and dine with us. So you must go to M. and 
Mme. de Larsonni^re, dear, and ask them to come, and the 
du Hautoys; and they must bring that pretty girl of theirs, 
of course; I hope she will dress herself properly for once. 
Hei^ mother is jealous of her, and makes her look such a 
figure. I hope that you gentlemen will do us the honor of 
coming too?” she added, stopping the procession in order to 
turn to the two Cruchots, who, seeing the Abbe in conversa¬ 
tion with Mme. des Grassins, had fallen behind. 

“Here we are at your door, madame,” said the notary. 
The three Cruchots took leave of the three des Grassins, and 
on their way home the talent for pulling each other to pieces, 
which provincials possess in perfection, was fully called into 
play; the great event of the evening was exhaustively dis¬ 
cussed, and all its bearings upon the respective positions of 
Cruchotins and Grassinistes were duly considered. Clearly 
it behooved both alike to prevent Eugenie from falling in love 
with her cousin, and to hinder Charles from thinking of 
Eugdnie. Sly hints, plausible insinuations, faint praise, vin¬ 
dications undertaken with an air of candid friendliness—what 




EUGENIE GRANDET. 67 

resistance could the Parisian offer when the air hurtled with 
deceptive weapons such as these ? 

As soon as the four relatives were left alone in the great 
room, M. Grandet spoke to his nephew. 

We must go to bed. It is too late to begin to talk 
to-night of the business that brought you here; to-morrow 
will be time enough for that. We have breakfast here at eight 
o’clock. At noon we take a snatch of something, a little 
fruit, a morsel of bread, and a glass of white wine, and, like 
Parisians, we dine at five o’clock. That is the way of it. If 
you care to take a look at the town, or to go into the country 
round about, you are quite free to do so. You will excuse 
me if, for business reasons, I cannot always accompany you. 
Very likely you will be told hereabouts that I am rich; ’tis 
always M. Grandet here and M. Grandet there. I let them 
talk. Their babble does not injure my credit in any way. 
But I have not a penny to bless myself with; and, old as I 
am, I work like any young journeyman who has nothing in 
the world but his plane and a pair of stout arms. Perhaps 
you will find out for yourself some of these days what a lot ' 
work it takes to earn a crown when you have to toil and moil 
for it yourself. Here, Nanon, bring the candles.” 

“I hope you will find everything you want, nephew,” said 
Mme. Grandet; *‘but if anything has been forgotten, you 
will call Nanon.” 

It would be difficult to want anything, my dear aunt, 
for I believe I have brought all my things with me. Per¬ 
mit me to wish you and my young cousin good-night.” 

Charles took a lighted wax-candle from Nanon ; it was a 
commodity of local manufacture, which had grown old in the 
shop, very dingy, very yellow, and so like the ordinary tallow 
variety that M. Grandet had no suspicion of the article of 
luxury before him ; indeed, it never entered into his head to 
imagine that there could be such a thing in the house. 

I will show you the way,” said the good man. 

C 


58 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


One of the doors in the dining-room gave immediate 
access to the archway and to the staircase; but to-night, out 
of compliment to his guest, Grandet went by way of the 
passage which separated the kitchen from the dining-room. 
A folding-door, with a large oval pane of glass let into it, 
closed in the passage at the end nearest the staircase, an 
arrangement intended to keep out the blasts of cold air that 
rushed through the archway. With a like end in view, strips 
of list had been nailed to the doors; but in winter the east 
wind found its way in, and whistled none the less shrewdly 
about the house, and the dining-room was seldom even toler¬ 
ably warm. 

Nanon went out, drew the bolts on the entrance gate, 
fastened the door of the dining-room, went across to the 
stable to let loose a great wolf-dog with a cracked voice; it 
sounded as though the animal was suffering from laryngitis. 
His savage temper was well known, and Nanon was the only 
human being who could manage him. There was some wild 
strain in both these children of the fields; they understood 
each other. 

Charles glanced round at the dingy yellow walls and smoke- 
begrimed ceiling, and saw how- the crazy, worm-eaten stairs 
shook beneath his uncle’s heavy tread; he was fast coming to 
his senses, this was sober reality indeed ! The place looked 
like a hen-roost. He looked round questioningly at the faces 
of his aunt and cousin, but they were so thoroughly accus¬ 
tomed to the staircase and its peculiarities that it never 
occurred to them that it could cause any astonishment; they 
took his signal of distress for a simple expression of friendli¬ 
ness, and smiled back at him in the most amiable way. That 
smile was the last straw; the young man was at his wits’ 
end. 

What the devil made my father send me here? ” said he 
to himself. 

Arrived on the first landing, he saw before him three doors 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


59 


painted a dull red-brown color; there were no mouldings 
round any of them, so that they would have been scarcely 
visible in the dusty surface of the wall if it had not been for 
the very apparent heavy bars of iron with which they were 
embellished, and which terminated in a sort of rough orna¬ 
mental design, as did the ends of the iron scutcheons which 
surrounded the keyholes. A door at the head of the stairs, 
which had once given entrance into the room over the kitchen, 
was evidently blocked up. As a matter of fact, the only 
entrance was through Grandet’s own room, and this room 
over the kitchen was the vine-grower’s sanctum. 

Daylight was admitted into it by a single window which 
looked out upon the yard, and which, for greater security^ was 
protected by a grating of massive iron bars. The master of 
the house allowed no one, not even Mme. Grandet, to set 
foot in this chamber; he kept the right of entry to himself, 
and sat there, undisturbed and alone, like an alchemist in the 
midst of his crucibles. Here, no doubt, there was some 
cunningly-contrived and secret hiding-place; for here he 
stored up the title-deeds of his estates; here, too, he kept the 
delicately-adjusted scales in which he weighed his gold louis; 
and here every night he made out receipts, wrote acknowledg¬ 
ments of sums received, and laid his schemes, so that other 
business men seeing Grandet never busy, and always prepared 
for every emergency, might have been excused for imagining 
that he had a fairy or familiar spirit at his beck and call. 
Here, no doubt, when Nanon’s snoring shook the rafters, 
when the savage watch-dog bayed and prowled about the yard, 
when Mme. Grandet and ^lugenie were fast asleep, the old 
cooper would come to be with his gold, and hug himself upon 
it, and toy with it, and fondle it, and brood over it, and so, 
with the intoxication of the gold upon him, at last to sleep. 
The walls were thick, the closed shutters kept their secret. 
He alone had the key of this laboratory, where, if reports 
spoke truly, he pored over plans on which every fruit tree 


60 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


belonging to him was mapped out, so that he could reckon 
out his crops, so much to every vine stem ; and his yield of 
timber, to a faggot. 

The door of Eugenie’s room was opposite this closed-up 
portal, the room occupied by M. and Mme. Grandet was at 
the end of the landing, and consisted of the entire front of 
the house. It was divided within by a partition, Mme. 
Grandet’s chamber was next to Eugenie’s, with which it com¬ 
municated by a glass door; the other half of the room, 
separated from the mysterious cabinet by a thick wall, be¬ 
longed to the master of the house. Goodman Grandet had 
cunningly lodged his nephew on the second story, in an airy 
garret immediately above his own room, so that he could hear 
every sound and inform himself of the young man’s goings 
and comings, if the latter should take it into his head to leave 
his quarters. 

Eug6nie and her mother, arrived on the first landing, 
kissed each other and said good-night; they took leave of 
Charles in a few formal words, spoken with an apparent 
indifference, which in her heart the girl was far from feeling, 
and went to their rooms. 

This is your room, nephew,” said Grandet, addressing 
Charles as he opened the door. “If you should wish to go 
out, you will have to call Nanon; for if you don’t it will be 
* no more at present from your most obedient,’ the dog will 
gobble you down before you know where you are. Good¬ 
night, sleep well. Ha ! ha ! the ladies have lighted a fire in 
your room,” he went on. 

Just at that moment big Nanon appeared, armed with a 
warming-pan. 

“ Did any one ever see the like ? ” said M. Grandet. “ Do 
you take my nephew for a sick woman; he is not an invalid. 
Just be off, Nanon ! you and your hot ashes.” 

“ But the sheets are damp, sir, and the gentleman looks as 
delicate as a woman.” 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


61 


All right, go through with it, since you have taken it into 
your head,” said Grandet, shrugging his shoulders, “but 
mind you don’t set the place on fire,” and the miser groped 
his way downstairs, muttering vaguely to himself. 

Charles, breathless with astonishment, was left among his 
trunks. He looked round about him, at the sloping roof 
of the attic, at the wall-paper of a pattern peculiar to little 
country inns, bunches of flowers symmetrically arranged on a 
buff-colored background ; he looked at the rough stone chim¬ 
ney-piece full of rifts and cracks (the mere sight of it sent a 
chill through him, in spite of the fire in the grate), at the 
ramshackle cane-seat chairs, at the open night-table large 
enough to hold a fair-sized sergeant-at-arms, at the strip of 
worn rag-carpet beside the canopied bedstead, at the curtains 
which shook every moment as if the whole worm-eaten 
structure would fall to pieces; finally, he turned his atten¬ 
tion to big Nanon, and said earnestly— 

“ Look here, my good girl, am I really in M. Grandet’s 
house ? M. Grandet, formerly mayor of Saumur, and brother 
of M. Grandet of Paris? ” 

“ Yes, sir, you are; and you are staying with a very kind, 
a very amiable and excellent gentleman. Am I to help you 
to unpack those trunks of yours? ” 

** Faith, yes, old soldier, I wish you would. Did you serve 
in the horse marines ? ” 

“Oh! oh! oh!” chuckled Nanon. “What may they 
be ? What are the horse marines ? Are they old salts ? Do 
they go to sea ? ” 

“ Here, look out my dressing-gown ; it is in that portman¬ 
teau, and this is the key.” 

Nanon was overcome with astonishment at the sight of a 
green silk dressing-gown, embroidered with gold flowers after 
an antique pattern. 

“ Are you going to sleep in that ? ” she inquired. 

“Yes.” 


62 


eugAnie gramdet. 


“ Holy Virgin ! What a beautiful altar cloth it would 
make for the parish church ! Oh, my dear young gentleman, 
you should give it to the church, and you will save your soul, 
which you are like to lose for that thing. Oh ! how nice you 
look in it. I will go and call mademoiselle to look at you.” 

“ Come now, Nanon„ since that is your name, will you 
hold your tongue, and let me go to bed. I will set my things 
straight to-morrow, and as you have taken such a fancy to my 
gown, you shall have a chance to save your soul. I am too 
good a Christian to take it away with me when I go ; you shall 
have it, and you can do whatever you like with it.” 

Nanon stood stockstill, staring at Charles; she could not 
bring herself to believe that he really meant what he said. 

You are going to give that grand dressing-gown to me .'” 
she said, as she turned to go. ** The gentleman is dreaming 
already. Good-night.” 

“Good-night, Nanon. What anyhow am I doing here?” 
said Charles to himself, as he dropped off to sleep. “ My 
father is no fool; I have not been sent here for nothing. 
Pooh ! ‘ Serious business to-morrow,^ as some old Greek 

wiseacre used to say.” 

** Satnte Vierge! how nice he is!” said Eugenie to her¬ 
self in the middle of her prayers, and that night they re¬ 
mained unfinished. 

Mme. Grandet alone lay down to rest, with no thought in 
her quiet mind. Through the door in the thin partition she 
could hear her husband pacing to and fro in his room. Like 
all sensitive and timid women, she had thoroughly studied the 
character of her lord and master. Just as the sea-mew fore¬ 
sees the coming storm, she knew by almost imperceptible 
signs that a tempest was raging in Grandet’s mind, and, to 
use her own expression, she “lay like one dead” at such 
seasons. Grandet’s eyes turned towards his sanctum; he 
looked at the door, which was lined with sheet iron on the 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


63 


inner side (he himself had seen to that), and muttered, “ What 
a preposterous notion this is of my brother’s, to leave his 
child to me ! A pretty legacy ! I haven’t twenty crowns to 
spare, and what would twenty crowns be to a popinjay like 
that, who looked at my weather-glass as if it wasn’t fit to light 
the fire with ? ” 

And Grandet, meditating on the probable outcome of this 
mournful dying request, was perhaps more perturbed in spirit 
than the brother who had made it. 

Shall I really have that golden gown ? ” Nanon said, 
and she fell asleep wrapped round in her altar cloth, dream¬ 
ing for the first time in her life of shining embroideries and 
flowered brocade, just as Eugenie dreamed of love. 

In a girl’s innocent and uneventful life there comes a 
mysterious hour of joy when the sunlight spreads through the 
soul, and it seems to her that the flowers express the thoughts 
that rise within her, thoughts that are quickened by every 
heart-beat, only to blend in a vague feeling of longing, when 
the days are filled with innocent melancholy and delicious 
happiness. Children smile when they see the light for the 
first time, and when a girl dimly divines the presence of love 
in the world she smiles as she smiled in her babyhood. If 
light is the first thing that we learn to love, is not love like 
light in the heart ? This moment had come for Eugenie; she 
saw the things of life clearly for the first time. 

Early rising is the rule in the country, so, like most other 
girls, Eugenie was up betimes in the morning; this morning 
she rose earlier than usual, said her prayers, and began to 
dress; her toilet was henceforth to possess an interest unknown 
before. She began by brushing her chestnut hair, and wound 
the heavy plaits about her head, careful that no loose ends 
should escape from the braided coronet which made an appro¬ 
priate setting for a face both frank and shy, a simple coiffure 
which harmonized with the girlish outlines. 

As she washed her hands again and again in the cold spring 


64 


EUG&NIE GRANDEE 


water that roughened and reddened the skin, she looked down 
at her pretty rounded arms and wondered what her cousin did 
to have hands so soft and so white, and nails so shapely. She 
put on a pair of new stockings, and her best shoes, and laced 
herself carefully, without passing over a single eyelet-hole. 
For the first time in her life, in fact, she wished to look her 
best, and felt that it was pleasant to have a pretty new dress to 
wear, a becoming dress which was nicely made. 

The church clock struck just as she had finished dressing; 
she counted the strokes, and was surprised to find that it was 
still only seven o’clock. She had been so anxious to have 
plenty of time for her toilet that she had risen too early, and 
now there was nothing left to do. Eugenie, in her ignorance, 
never thought of studying the position of a tress of hair, and 
of altering it a dozen times to criticise its effect; she simply 
folded her arms, sat down by the window, and looked out 
upon the yard, the long strip of garden, and the terraced 
gardens up above upon the ramparts. 

It was a somewhat dreary outlook thus shut in by the grim 
rock walls, but not without a charm of its own, the mysterious 
beauty of quiet overshaded gardens, or of wild and solitary 
places. Under the kitchen window there was a well with a 
stone coping round it; a pulley was suspended above the water 
from an iron bracket overgrown by a vine; the vine leaves 
were red and faded now that the autumn was nearly at an end, 
and the crooked stem was plainly visible as it wound its way 
to the house wall, and crept along the house till it came to an 
end by the wood-stack, where the faggots were arranged with 
as much neatness and precision as the volumes on some book- 
lover’s shelves. The flagstones in the yard were dark with 
age and mosses, and dank with the stagnant air of the place; 
weeds grew here and there among the chinks. The massive 
outworks of the old fortifications were green with moss, with 
here and there a long dark brown streak where the water 
dripped, and the eight tumble-down steps, which gave access 


eug^:nie grandet. 


65 


to the garden at the farther end of the yard, were almost 
hidden by a tall growth of plants; the general effect of the 
crumbling stones had a vague resemblance to some crusader’s 
tomb erected by his widow in the days of yore and long since 
fallen into ruin. 

Along the low mouldering stone-wall there was a fence of 
open lattice-work, rotten with age, and fast falling to pieces; 
overrun by various creeping plants that clambered over it at 
their own sweet will. A couple of stunted apple trees spread 
out their gnarled and twisted branches on either side of the 
wicket gate that led into the garden—three straight gravel 
walks with strips of border in between, and a line of box¬ 
edging on either side; and at the farther end, underneath 
the ramparts, a sort of arbor of lime trees, and a row of rasp¬ 
berry canes. A huge walnut tree grew at the end nearest to 
the house, and almost overshadowed the cooper’s strong room 
with its spreading branches. 

It was one of those soft bright autumn mornings peculiar 
to the districts along the Loire; there was not a trace of 
mist; the light frosty rime of the previous night was rapidly 
disappearing as the mild rays of the autumn sun shone on the 
picturesque surroundings, the old walls, the green tangled 
growth in the yard and garden. 

All these things had been long familiar to Eugenie’s eyes, 
but to-day it seemed to her that there was a new beauty about 
them. A throng of confused thoughts filled her mind as the 
sunbeams overflowed the world without. A vague, inexplic¬ 
able new happiness stirred within her, and enveloped her soul, 
as a bright cloud might cling about some object in the mate¬ 
rial world. The quaint garden, the old walls, every detail in 
her little world seemed to be living through this new experi¬ 
ence with her; the nature without her was in harmony with 
her inmost thoughts. The sunlight crept along the wall till 
it reached a maiden-hair fern ; the changing hues of a pigeon’s 
breast shone from the thick fronds and glossy stems, and all 
5 


66 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


Eugenie’s future grew bright with radiant hopes. Hence¬ 
forward the bit of wall, its pale flowers, its blue harebells and 
bleached grasses, was a pleasant sight for her; it called up 
associations which had all the charm of the memories of 
childhood. 

The rustling sound made by the leaves as they fell to the 
earth, the echoes that came up from the court, seemed like 
answers to the girl’s secret questionings as she sat and mused ; 
she might have stayed there by the window all day and nevtr 
have noticed how the hours went by, but other thoughts 
surged up within her soul. Again and again she rose and 
stood before the glass, and looked at herself, as a conscien¬ 
tious writer scrutinizes his work, criticises it, and says hard 
things about it to himself. 

I am not pretty enough for him ! ” 

This was what Eugenie thought, in her humility, and the 
thought was fertile in suffering. The poor child did not do 
herself justice; but humility, or, more truly, fear, is born with 
love. Eugenie’s beauty was of a robust type often found 
among the lower middle classes, a type which may seem 
somewhat wanting in refinement, but in her the beauty of the 
Venus of Milo was ennobled and purified by the beauty of 
Christian sentiment, which invests woman with a dignity 
unknown to ancient sculptors. Her head was very large ; the 
masculine but delicate outlines of her forehead recalled the 
Jupiter of Phidias; all the radiance of her pure life seemed 
to shine from the clear gray eyes. An attack of smallpox, so 
mild that it had left no scars on the oval face or features, had 
yet somewhat blurred their fresh fair coloring, and coarsened 
the smooth and delicate surface, still so fine and soft that her 
mother’s gentle kiss left a passing trace of faint red on her 
cheek. Perhaps her nose was a little too large, but it did not 
contradict the kindly and affectionate expression of the mouth, 
and the red lips covered with finely-etched lines. Her throat 
was daintily rounded. There was something that attracted 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


67 


attention and stirred the imagination in the curving lines of 
her figure, covered to the throat by her high-necked dress; no 
doubt she possessed little of the grace that is due to the 
toilet, and her tall frame was strong rather than lissome, but 
this was not without its charm for judges of beauty. 

For Eugenie was both tall and strongly built. She had 
nothing of the prettiness that ordinary people admire; but 
her beauty was unmistakable, and of a kind in which artists 
alone delight. A painter in quest of an exalted and spiritual 
type, searching women’s faces for the beauty which Raphael 
dreamed of and conjured into being, the eyes full of proud 
humility, the pure outlines, often due to some chance inspir¬ 
ation of the artist, but which a virtuous and Christian life can 
alone acquire or preserve—a painter haunted by this ideal 
would have seen at once in Eugenie Grandet’s face her uncon¬ 
scious and innate nobility of soul, a world of love behind the 
quiet brow, and in the way she had with her eyelids and in her 
eyes that divine something which baffles description. There 
was a serene tranquillity about her features, unspoiled and 
unwearied by the expression of pleasure ; it was as if you 
watched, across some placid lake, the shadowy outlines of 
hills far off against the sky. The beauty of Eugenie’s face, 
so quiet and so softly colored, was like that of some fair, half- 
opened flower about which the light seems to hover; in its 
quality of restfulness, its subtle revelation of a beautiful nature, 
lay the charm that attracted beholders. Eugdnie was still on 
the daisied brink of life, where illusions blossom and joys are 
gathered which are not known in later days. So she looked 
in the glass, and with no thought of love as yet in her 
mind, she said, “ He will not give me a thought; I am too 
ugly! ” 

Then she opened her door, went out on to the landing, and 
bent over the staircase to hear the sounds in the house. 

‘‘ He is not getting up yet,” she thought. She heard Nanon’s 
morning cough as the good woman went to and fro, swept out 


68 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


the dining-room, lit the kitchen fire, chained up the dog, and 
talked to her friends the brutes in the stable. 

Eugenie fled down the staircase, and ran over to Nanon, 
who was milking the cow. 

** Nanon,” she cried, “do let us have some cream for my 
cousin’s coffee, there’s a dear.” 

“But, mademoiselle, you can’t have cream off this morn¬ 
ing’s milk,” said Nanon, as she burst out laughing. “ I can’t 
make cream for you. Your cousin is as charming as charming 
can be, that he is! You haven’t seen him in that silk night 
rail of his, all flowers and gold ! I did though ! The linen 
he wears is every bit as fine as M. le Cure’s surplice.” 

“ Nanon, make some cake for us.” 

“ And who is to find the wood to heat the oven and the 
flour and the butter? ” asked Nanon, who in her capacity of 
Grandet’s prime minister was a person of immense importance 
in Eugenie’s eyes, and even in Eugenie’s mother’s. “ Is he 
to be robbed to make a feast for your cousin ? Ask for the 
butter and the flour and the firewood; he is your father, go 
and ask him, he may give them to you. There ! there he is, 
just coming downstairs to see after the provisions-” 

But Eugenie had escaped into the garden; the sound of her 
father’s footstep on the creaking staircase terrified her. She 
was conscious of a happiness that shrank from the observation 
of others, a happiness which, as we are apt to think, and per¬ 
haps not without reason, shines from our eyes, and is written 
at large upon our foreheads. And not only so, she was con¬ 
scious of other thoughts. The bleak discomfort of her father’s 
house had struck her for the first time, and, with a dim feeling 
of vexation, the poor child wished that she could alter it all, 
and bring it more into harmony with her cousin’s elegance. 
She felt a passionate longing to do something for him, without 
the slightest idea what that something should be. The wo¬ 
manly instinct awakened in her at the first sight of her cousin 
was only the stronger because she had reached her three-and- 



EUGJtNIE GRANDET. 


69 


twentieth year, and mind and heart were fully developed; and 
she was so natural and simple that she acted on the prompt¬ 
ings of her angelic nature without submitting herself, her im¬ 
pressions, or her feelings to any introspective process. 

For the first time in her life the sight of her father struck a 
sort of terror into her heart; she felt that he was the master 
of her fate, and that she was guiltily hiding some of her thoughts 
from him. She began to walk hurriedly up and down, won¬ 
dering how it was that the air was so fresh; there was a reviv¬ 
ing force in the sunlight, it seemed to be within her as well 
as without, it was as if a new life had begun. 

While she was still thinking how to gain her end concern¬ 
ing the cake, a quarrel came to pass between Nanon and 
Grandet, a thing as rare as a winter swallow. The good man 
had just taken his keys, and was about to dole out the provi¬ 
sions required for the day. 

“ Is there any bread left over from yesterday he asked 
of Nanon. 

“ Not a crumb, sir.” 

Grandet took up a large loaf, round in form and close in 
consistence, shaped in one of the flat baskets which they use 
for baking in Anjou, and was about to cut it, when Nanon 
broke in upon him with— 

There are five of us to-day, sir.” 

‘‘True,” answered Grandet; “but these loaves of yours 
weigh six pounds apiece ; there will be some left over. Be¬ 
sides, these young fellows from Paris never touch bread, as 
you will soon see.” 

“ Then do they eat kitchen ? ” asked Nanon. 

This word kitchen in the Angevin dictionary signifies any¬ 
thing which is spread upon bread ; from butter, the commonest 
variety, to preserved peaches, the most distinguished of all 
kitchens; and those who, as small children, have nibbled off 
the kitchen and left the bread, will readily understand the 
bearing of Nanon’s remark. 


70 


EUGi:NIE' GRANDET, 


‘‘•No,” replied Grandet, with much gravity, “they eat 
neither bread nor kitchen; they are like a girl in love, as you 
may say.” 

Having at length cut down the day’s rations to the lowest 
possible point, the miser was about to go to his fruit-loft, first 
carefully locking up the cupboards of his storeroom, when 
Nan on stopped him. 

“Just give me some flour and butter, sir,” she said, “ and 
I will make a cake for the children.” 

“ Arc you going to turn the house upside down because my 
nephew is here ? ” 

“ Your nephew was no more in my mind than your dog, no 

more than he was in yours- There now! you have only 

put out six lumps of sugar, and I want eight.” 

“ Come, come, Nanon ; I have never seen you like this 
before. What has come over you ? Are you mistress here ? 
You will have six lumps of sugar and no more.” 

“ Oh, very well; and what is your nephew to sweeten his 
coffee with ? ” 

“ He can have two lumps; I shall go without it myself,” 

“ You go without sugar ! and at your age ! I would sooner 
pay for it out of my own pocket.” 

“ Mind your own business.” 

In spite of the low price of sugar, it was, in Grandet’s 
eyes, the most precious of all colonial products. For him it 
was always something to be used sparingly ; it was still worth 
six francs a pound, as in the time of the Empire, and this pet 
economy had become an inveterate habit with him. But 
every woman, no matter how simple she may be, can devise 
some shift to gain her ends; and Nanon allowed the question 
of the sugar to drop, in order to have her way about the 
cake. 

“ Mademoiselle,” she called through the window, “wouldn’t 
you like some cake? ” 

“No, no,” answered Eugenie. 



eug£nie grandet. 


71 


‘'Stay, Nanon,” said Grandet as he heard his daughter’s 
voice; “there!” 

He opened the flour-bin, measured out some flour, and 
added a few ounces of butter to the piece which he had 
already cut. 

“ And firewood ; I shall want firewood to heat the oven,” 
said the inexorable Nanon. 

“Ah! well, you can take what you want,” he answered 
ruefully; but you will make a fruit tart at the same time, and 
you must bake the dinner in the oven, that will save lighting 
another fire.” 

“Why!” cried Nanon; “there is no need to tell me 
that! ” 

Grandet gave his trusty prime minister a glance that was 
almost paternal. 

“Mademoiselle,” cried Nanon, “we are going to have a 
cake.” 

Grandet came back again with the fruit, and began by 
setting down a plateful on the kitchen table. 

“Just look here, sir,” said Nanon, “what lovely boots 
your nephew has ! What leather, how nice it smells ! What 
are they to be cleaned with ? Am I to put your egg blacking 
on them ? ” 

“No, Nanon,” said Eugenie; “I expect the egg would 
spoil the leather. You had better tell him that you have no 

idea how to clean black morocco- Yes, it is morocco, 

and he himself will buy you something in Saumur to clean his 
boots with. I have heard it said that they put sugar into 
their blacking, and that is what makes it so shiny.” 

“Then is it good to eat?” asked Nanon, as she picked 
up the boots and smelt them. “ Why, why ! they smell of 
madame’s eau-de-Cologne ! Oh, how funny ! ” 

Funny I"" said her master; “people spend more money 
on their boots than they are worth that stand in them, and 
you think it funny ! ” He had just returned from a second 



72 EUGENIE GRANDET. 

and final expedition to the fruit-loft, carefully locking the 
door after him. 

“You will have soup once or twice a week while your 
nephew is here, sir, will you not? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ Shall I go round to the butcher’s?” 

“You will do nothing of the kind. You can make some 
chicken-broth; the tenants will keep you going. But I shall 
tell Cornoiller to kill some ravens for me. That kind of 
game makes the best broth in the world.” 

“Is it true, sir, that they live on dead things? ” 

“You are a fool, Nanon ! They live, like everybody else, 
on anything that they can pick up. Don’t we all live on 
dead things? What about legacies?” And the good man 
Grandet, having no further order to give, drew out his watch, 
and finding that there was yet half an hour to spare before 
breakfast, took up his hat, gave his daughter a kiss, and said, 
“ Would you like to take a walk along the Loire ? I have 
something to see after in the meadows down there.” 

Eugenie put on her straw hat lined with rose-colored silk; 
and then father and daughter went down the crooked street 
towards the market-place. 

“Where are you off to so early this morning?” said the 
notary Cruchot, as he met the Grandets. 

“We are going to take a look at something,” responded 
his friend, in nowise deceived by this early move on the 
notary’s part. 

Whenever Grandet was about to “ take a look at some¬ 
thing,” the notary knew by experience that there was some¬ 
thing to be gained by going with him. With him, therefore, 
he went. 

“ Come along, Cruchot,” said Grandet, addressing the 
notary. “ You are one of my friends; I am going to show 
you what a piece of folly it is to plant poplars in good 
soil-” 



EUGENIE GRANDEE 


73 


Then the sixty thousand francs that you fingered for those 
poplars of yours in the meadows by the Loire are a mere trifle 
to you?” said Cruchot, opening his eyes wide in his be¬ 
wilderment. “And such luck as you had too !- Felling 

your timber just when there was no white wood to be had in 
Nantes, so that every trunk fetched thirty francs !” 

Eugenie heard and did not hear, utterly unconscious that 
the most critical moment of her life was rapidly approaching, 
that a paternal and sovereign decree was about to be pro¬ 
nounced, and that the old notary was to bring all this about. 
Grandet had reached the magnificent meadow-land by the 
Loire, which had come into his hands in his Republican days. 
Some thirty laborers were busy digging out the roots of the 
poplars that once stood there, filling up the holes that were 
left, and leveling the ground. 

“ Now, M. Cruchot, see how much space a poplar takes up,” 
said he, addressing the notary. “ Jean,” he called to a work¬ 
man, “ m—m—measure r—round the sides with your rule.” 

“ Eight feet four times over,” said the workman when he 
had finished. 

“Thirty-two feet of loss,” said Grandet to Cruchot. 
“Now along that line there were three hundred poplars, 
weren’t there? Well, then, three hundred t—t—times thirty- 
two f—feet will eat up five hundredweight of hay, allow 
twice as much again for the space on either side, and you get 
fifteen hundredweight; then there is the intervening space— 
say a thousand t—t—trusses of hay altogether.” 

“Well,” said Cruchot, helping his friend out, “and a 
thousand trusses of that hay would fetch something like six 
hundred francs.” 

<<S—s—say t—twelve hundred, because the s—second 
crop is worth three or four hundred francs. Good, then 
reckon up what t—t—twelve hundred francs per annum d— 
(j—during f—forty years comes to, at compound interest, of 
course.” - 



74 


eugAnie geandet. 


** Sixty thousand francs, or thereabouts,” said the notary. 

‘‘That is what I make it! Sixty thousand f—f—francs. 
Well,” the vine-grower went on without stammering, “ two 
thousand poplars will not bring in fifty thousand francs in 
forty years. So you lose on them. That / found out,” said 
Grandet, who was vastly pleased with himself. “Jean,” he 
continued, turning to the laborer, “ fill up all the holes ex¬ 
cept those along the riverside, where you can plant those 
poplar saplings that I bought. If you set them along by the 
Loire, they will grow there finely at the expense of the 
government,” he added, and as he looked round at Cruchot 
the wen on his nose twitched slightly, the most sardonic 
smile could not have said more. 

“ Yes, it is clear enough, poplars should only be planted in 
poor soil,” said Cruchot, quite overcome with amazement at 
Grandet’s astuteness. 

“ Y—e—s, sir,” said the cooper ironically. 

Eugenie was looking out over the glorious landscape and 
along the Loire, without heeding her father’s arithmetic; but 
Cruchot’s talk with his client took another turn, and her 
attention was suddenly aroused. 

“ So you have a son-in-law come from Paris; they are talk¬ 
ing about nothing but your nephew in all Saumur. I shall 
soon have settlements to draw up ; eh, pdre Grandet? ” 

“ Did you come out early to t—t—tell me that? ” inquired 
Grandet, and again the wen twitched. “Very well, you are 
an old crony of mine; I will be p—plain with you, and t— 
t —tell you what you w—want to know. I would rather fling 
my d—d—daughter into the Loire, look you, than g—give 
her to her cousin. You can give that out. But, no; 1—1 — 
let people gossip.” 

Everything swam before Eugenie’s eyes. Her vague hopes 
of distant happiness had suddenly taken definite shape, had 
sprung up and blossomed, and then her harvest of flowers had 
been as suddenly cut down and lay on the earth. Since 


eug£:nie grandet. 


75 


yesterday she had woven the bonds of happiness that unite 
two souls, and henceforward sorrow, it seemed, was to 
strengthen them. Is it not written in the noble destiny of 
woman that the grandeur of sorrow should touch her more 
closely than all the pomp and splendor of fortune ? 

How came it that a father’s feelings had been extinguished 
(as it seemed) in her father’s heart ? What crime could be 
laid at Charles’ door ? Mysterious questions ! Mysterious 
and sad forebodings already surrounded her growing love, 
that mystery within her soul. When they turned to go home 
again, she trembled in every limb; and as they went up the 
shady street, along which she had lately gone so joyously, 
the shadows looked gloomy, the air she breathed seemed full 
of the melancholy of autumn, everything about her was sad. 
Love, that had brought these keener perceptions, was quick to 
interpret every boding sign. As they neared home, she 
walked on ahead of her father, knocked at the house-door, 
and stood waiting beside it. But Grandet, seeing that the 
notary carried a newspaper still in its wrapper, asked, “ How 
are consols?” 

‘‘I know you will not take my advice, Grandet,” Cruchot 
replied. “You should buy at once; the chance of making 
twenty per cent, on them in two years is still open to you, 
and they pay a very fair rate of interest besides, five thousand 
livres is not a bad return on eighty thousand francs. You 
can buy now at eighty francs fifty centimes.” 

“ We shall see,” remarked Grandet pensively, rubbing his 
chin. 

Mon Dieuf” exclaimed the notary, who by this time 
had unfolded his newspaper. 

“Well, what is it?” cried Grandet as Cruchot put the 
paper in his hands and said— 

“Read that paragraph.” 

“ M. Grandet, one of the most highly-respected merchants 


76 


eugAnie geandet. 


in Paris, shot himself through the head yesterday afternoon, 
after putting in an appearance on ’Change as usual. He had 
previously sent in his resignation to the President of the 
Chamber of Deputies, resigning his position as Judge of the 
Tribunal of Commerce at the same time. His affairs had 
become involved through the failures of his stockbroker and 
notary, MM. Roguin and Souchet. M. Grandet, whose char¬ 
acter was greatly esteemed, and whose credit stood high, 
would no doubt have found temporary assistance on the 
market which would have enabled him to tide over his diffi¬ 
culties. It is to be regretted that a man of such high char¬ 
acter should have given way to the first impulse of despair ” 
—and so forth, and so forth. 

** I knew it,” the old vine-grower said. 

Phlegmatic though Cruchot was, he felt a horrible shudder 
run through him at the words ; perhaps Grandet of Paris had 
stretched imploring hands in vain to the millions of Grandet 
of Saumur; the blood ran cold in his veins. 

‘‘And his son?” he asked presently, “he was in such 
spirits yesterday evening.” 

“His son knows nothing as yet,” Grandet answered, im¬ 
perturbable as ever. 

“Good-morning, M. Grandet,” said Cruchot. He under¬ 
stood the position now, and went to reassure the President de 
Bonfons. 

Grandet found breakfast ready. Mme. Grandet was already 
seated in her chair, mounted on the wooden blocks, and was 
knitting woolen cuffs for the winter. Eugenie ran to her 
mother and put her arms about her, with the eager hunger for 
affection that comes of a hidden trouble. 

“You can get your breakfast,” said Nanon, bustling down¬ 
stairs in a hurry j “ he is sleeping like a cherub. He looks 
so nice with his eyes shut! I went in and called him, but it 
was all one, he never heard me.” 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


77 


"'Let him sleep,” said Grandet; ''he will wake soon 
enough to hear bad news, in any case.” 

“What is the matter?” asked Eugenie. She was putting 
into her cup the two smallest lumps of sugar, weighing good¬ 
ness knows how many grains; her worthy parent was wont to 
amuse himself by cutting up sugar whenever he had nothing 
better to do. 

Mme. Grandet, who had not dared to put the question her¬ 
self, looked at her husband. 

“ His father has blown his brains out.” 

My uncled'' said Eugenie. 

“ Oh ! that poor boy ! ” cried Mme. Grandet. 

“ Poor indeed ! ” said Grandet; he has not a penny.” 

“ Ah ! well, he is sleeping as if he were the king of all the 
world,” said Nanon pityingly. 

Eugenie could not eat. Her heart was wrung as a woman’s 
heart can be when for the first time her whole soul is filled 
with sorrow and compassion for the sorrow of one she loves. 
She burst into tears. 

“You did not know your uncle, so what is there to cry 
about?” said her father with a glance like a hungry tiger; 
just such a glance as he would give, no doubt, to his heaps 
of gold. 

“ But who wouldn’t feel sorry for the poor young man, 
sir? ” said the serving-maid ; “sleeping there like a log, and 
knowing nothing of his fate.” 

“ I did not speak to you, Nanon ! Hold your tongue.” 

In that moment Eugenie learned that a woman who loves 
must dissemble her feelings. She was silent. 

“ Until I come back, Mme. Grandet, you will say nothing 
about this to him, I hope,” the old cooper continued. “ They 
are making a ditch in my meadows along the road, and I 
must go and see after it. I shall come back for the second 
breakfast at noon, and then my nephew and I will have a talk 
about his affairs. As for you. Mademoiselle Eugenie, if you 


78 


EUGJ^NIE GRANDET 


are crying over that popinjay, let us have no more of it, child. 
He will be off post-haste to the Indies directly,-and you will 
never set eyes on him any more.” 

Her father took up his gloves, which were lying on the rim 
of his hat, put them on in his cool, deliberate way, inserting 
the fingers of one hand between those of the other, dovetail 
fashion, so as to thrust them down well into the tips of the 
gloves, and then he went out. 

“Oh! mamma, I can scarcely breathe ! ” cried Eugenie, 
when she was alone with her mother; I have never suffered 
like this! ” 

Mine. Grandet, seeing her daughter’s white face, opened 
the window and let fresh air into the room. 

“ I feel better now,” said Eugenie after a little while. 

This nervous excitement in one who was usually so quiet 
and self-possessed produced an effect on Mme. Grandet. She 
looked at her daughter, and her mother’s love and sympathetic 
instinct told her everything. But, in truth, the celebrated 
Hungarian twin-sisters, united to each other by one of nature’s 
errors, could scarcely have lived in closer sympathy than 
Eugenie and her mother. Were they not always together: 
together in the window where they sat the livelong day, to¬ 
gether at church; did they not breathe the same air even when 
they slept ? 

“My poor little girl!” said Mme. Grandet, drawing 
Eugenie’s head down till it rested upon her bosom. 

Her daughter lifted her face, and gave her mother a ques¬ 
tioning look which seemed to read her inmost thoughts. 

“ Why must he be sent to the Indies ? ” said the girl. “ If 
he is in trouble, ought he not to stay here with us? Is he not 
our nearest relation ? ” 

“ Yes, dear child, that would only be natural; but your 
father has reasons for what he does, and we must respect them.” 

Mother and daughter sat in silence; the one on her chair 
mounted on the wooden blocks, the other in her little arm- 


eugAnie geandet. 


79 


chair. Both women took up their needlework. Eugenie felt 
that her mother understood her, and her heart was full of 
gratitude for such tender sympathy. 

How kind you are, dear mamma ! ” she said as she took 
her mother’s hand and kissed it. 

Tl^e worn, patient face, aged with many sorrows, lighted up 
at the words. 

“ Do you like him ? ” asked Eugenie. 

For all answer, Mme. Grandet smiled. Then after a mo¬ 
ment’s pause she murmured, ‘‘ You cannot surely love him 
already? That would be a pity.” 

‘‘Why would it be a pity?” asked Eugenie. “You like 
him, Nanon likes him, why should I not like him too? Now 
then, mamma, let us set the table for his breakfast.” 

She threw down her work, and her mother followed her 
example, saying as she did so, “You are a mad girl! ” 

But none the less did she sanction her daughter’s freak by 
assisting in it. 

Eugenie called Nanon. 

“ Haven’t you all you want yet, mamselle ? ” 

“Nanon, surely you will have some cream by twelve 
o’clock ? ” 

“ By twelve o’clock ? Oh ! yes,” answered the old servant. 

“ Very well, then, let the coffee be very strong. I have 
heard M. des Grassins say that they drink their coffee very 
strong in Paris. Putin plenty.” 

“ And where is it to come from ? ” 

“ You must buy some.” 

“ And suppose the master meets me ? ” 

“ He is down by the river.” 

“ I will just slip out then. But M. Fessard asked me when 
I went about the candle if the Three Holy Kings were paying 
us a visit. Our goings on will be all over the town.” 

“Your father would be quite capable of beating us,” said 
Mme. Grandet, “if he suspected anything of all this.” 


80 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


‘‘Oh! well, then, never mind; he will beat us, we will 
take the beating on our knees/’ 

At this Mme. Grandet raised her eyes to heaven, and said 
no more. Nanon put on her sun-bonnet and went out. 
Eugenie spread a clean linen tablecloth, then she went up¬ 
stairs in quest of some bunches of grapes which she had 
amused herself by hanging from some strings up in the attic. 
She tripped lightly along the corridor, so as not to disturb her 
cousin, and could not resist the temptation to stop a moment 
before the door to listen to his even breathing. 

“Trouble wakes while he is sleeping,” she said to herself. 

She arranged her grapes on the few last green vine-leaves 
as daintily as any experienced chef d'office^ and set them on 
the table in triumph. She levied contributions on the pears 
which her father had counted out, and piled them up pyramid- 
fashion, with autumn leaves among them. She came and 
went, and danced in and out. She might have ransacked the 
house; the will was in nowise lacking, but her father kept 
everything under lock and key, and the keys were in his 
pocket. Nanon came back with two new-laid eggs. Eugenie 
could have flung her arms round the girl’s neck. 

“ The farmer from La Lande had eggs in his basket; I 
asked him for some, and to please me he let me have these, 
the nice man.” 

After two hours of industrious application, Eugenie suc¬ 
ceeded in preparing a very simple meal; it cost but little, it 
is true, but it was a terrible infringement of the immemorial 
laws and customs of the house. No one sat down to the mid¬ 
day meal, which consisted of a little bread, some fruit or 
butter, and a glass of wine. Twenty times in those two hours 
Eugenie had left her work to watch the coffee boil, or to 
listen for any sound announcing that her cousin was getting 
up; now looking round on the table drawn up to the fire, 
with one of the armchairs set beside it for her cousin, on the 
two plates of fruit, the egg-cups, the bottle of white wine, the 


eug£nie grandet. 


81 


bread, and the little pyramid of white sugar in a saucer; 
Eugenie trembled from head to foot at the mere thought of 
the glance her father would give her if he should happen to 
come in at that moment. Often, therefore, did she look at 
the clock, to see if there was yet time for her cousin to finish 
his breakfast before her parent’s return. 

“ Never mind, Eugenie, if your father comes in, I will 
take all the blame,” said Mine. Grandet. 

Eugenie could not keep back the tears. Oh ! my kind 
mother,” she cried; I have not loved you enough ! ” 

Charles, after making innumerable pirouettes round his 
room, came down at last, singing gay little snatches of song. 
Luckily it was only eleven o’clock after all. He had taken 
as much pains with his appearance (the Parisian !) as if he 
had been staying in the chateau belonging to the high-born 
fair one who was traveling in Scotland; and now he came in 
with that gracious air of condescension which sits not ill on 
youth, and which gave Eugenie a melancholy pleasure. He had 
come to regard the collapse of his castles in Anjou as a very 
good joke, and went up to his aunt quite gaily. 

“ I hope you slept well, dear aunt ? And you too, cousin ? ” 
Very well, sir; how did you sleep? ” 

“ Soundly.” 

“Cousin, you must be hungry,” said Eugenie; ‘‘sit 
down.” 

“ Oh ! I never breakfast before twelve o’clock, just after I 
rise. But I have fared so badly on my journey, that I will 

yield to persuasion. Besides-” he drew out the daintiest 

little watch that ever issued from Breguet’s workshop. “ Dear 
me, it is only eleven o’clock ; I have been up betimes.” 

“ Up betimes? ” asked Mme. Grandet. 

“ Yes, but I wanted to set my things straight. Well, I am 
quite ready for something, something not very substantial, a 
fowl or a partridge.” 

“ Holy Virgin ! ” exclaimed Nanon, hearing these words. 


62 


eugAnie geandet. 


A partridge,” said Eugenie to herself. She would willingly 
have given all she had for one. 

“ Come and take your seat,” said Mme. Grandet, address¬ 
ing her nephew. 

The dandy sank into the armchair in a graceful attitude, 
much as a pretty woman might recline on her sofa. Eugenie 
and her mother drew their chairs to the fire and sat near him. 

‘‘Do you always live here?” Charles inquired, thinking 
that the room looked even more hideous by daylight than by 
candlelight. 

“Always,” Eugenic answered, watching him as she spoke. 
“ Always, except during the vintage. Then we go to help 
Nanon, and we all stay at the Abbey at Noyers.” 

“ Do you ever take a walk? ” 

“ Sometimes, on Sundays after vespers, when it is fine, we 
walk down as far as the bridge,” said Mme. Grandet, “or we 
sometimes go to see them cutting the hay.” 

“ Have, you a theatre here ? ” 

“Go to the play!” cried Mme. Grandet; “go to see 
play-actors ! Why, sir, do you not know that that is a mortal 
sin?” 

“There, sir,” said Nanon, bringing in the eggs, “ we will 
give you chickens in the shell.” 

“ Oh ! new-laid eggs,” said Charles, who, after the manner 
of those accustomed to luxury, had quite forgotten all about 
his partridge. “ Delicious ! Do you happen to have any 
butter, eh, my good girl?” 

“ Butter? If you have butter now, you will have no cake 
by-and-by,” said Nanon. 

“Yes, of course, Nanon; bring some butter,” cried Eu- 

gtmt. 

The young girl watched her cousin while he cut his bread 
and butter into strips and felt happy. The most romantic 
shopgirl in Paris could not more thoroughly enjoy the spectacle 
of innocence triumphant in a melodrama. It must be con- 


eugAnie geandet. 


83 


ceded that Charles, who had been brought up by a graceful 
and charming mother, and had received his “finishing educa¬ 
tion ” from an accomplished woman of the world, was as 
dainty, neat, and elegant in his ways as any coxcomb of the 
gentler sex. The girl’s quiet sympathy produced an almost 
magnetic effect. Charles, finding himself thus waited upon 
by his cousin and aunt, could not resist the influence of their 
overflowing kindness. He was radiant with good-humor, and 
the look he gave Eugenie was almost a smile. As he looked 
more closely at her he noticed her pure, regular features, her 
unconscious attitude, the wonderful clearness of her eyes, in 
which love sparkled, though she as yet knew nothing of love 
but its pain and a wistful longing. 

“ Really, my dear cousin,” he said, “ if you were in a box 
at the opera and in evening dress, and I would answer for it, 
my aunt’s remark about deadly sin would be fully justified, 
all the men would become envious and all the women 
jealous.” 

Eugenie’s heart beat fast with joy at this compliment, though 
it conveyed no meaning whatever to her mind. 

“ You are laughing at a poor little country cousin,” she said. 

“If you knew me better, cousin, you would know that I 
detest banter; it sears the heart and deadens the feelings.” 
And he swallowed down a strip of bread and butter with per¬ 
fect satisfaction. 

“No,” he continued, “I never make fun of others, very 
likely because I have not wit enough, a defect which puts me 
at a great disadvantage. They have a deadly trick in Paris 
of saying, ‘ He is so good-natured,’ which, being interpreted, 
means—‘ the poor youth is as stupid as a rhinoceros.’ But as 
I happen to be rich, and it is known that I can hit the bull’s 
eye straight off at thirty paces with any kind of pistol any¬ 
where, these witticisms are not leveled at me.” 

“It is evident from what you say, nephew,” said Mme. 
Grandet gravely, “that you have a kind heart.” 


84 


EUGtNiE GRANDET. 


*‘That is a very pretty ring of yours,” said Eugenie; ^*is 
there any harm in asking to see it? ” 

Charles took off the ring and held it out; Eugenie reddened 
as her cousin’s rose-pink nails came in contact with her finger¬ 
tips. 

“ Mother, only see how fine the work is! ” 

“Oh, what a lot of gold there is in it,” said Nanon, who 
brought in the coffee. 

“What is that?” asked Charles, laughing, as he pointed 
to an oval pipkin, made of glazed brown earthenware, orna¬ 
mented without by a circular fringe of ashes. It was full of a 
brown boiling liquid, in which coffee grounds were visible as 
they rose to the surface and fell again. 

“ Coffee; boiling hot! ” answered Nanon. 

“ Oh ! my dear aunt, I must at least leave some beneficent 
trace of my stay here. You are a long way behind the times ! 
I will show you how to make decent coffee in a Chaptal 
coffee-pot.” Forthwith he endeavored to explain the princi¬ 
ples on which this utensil is constructed, and how the coffee 
should be prepared. 

“ Bless me 1 if there is all that to-do about it,” said Nanon, 
“ you would have to give your whole time to it. I’ll never 
make coffee that way, I know. Who is to cut the grass for 
our cow while I am looking after the coffee-pot?” 

“ I would do it,” said Eugenie. 

“ Child said Mme. Grandet, with a look at her daughter; 
and at the word came a swift recollection of the misery about 
to overwhelm the unconscious young man, and the three wo¬ 
men were suddenly silent, and gazed pityingly at him. He 
could not understand it. 

“ What is it, cousin ? ” he asked Eugenie. 

“Hush!” said Mme. Grandet, seeing that the girl was 
about to reply. “ You know that your father means to speak 
to the gentleman-” 

“ Say ‘ Charles,’ ” said young Grandet. 



85 


EUGENIE GRANDET, 

‘‘ Oh, is your name Charles ? ” said Eugenie. It is a nice 
name.*’ 

Evil forebodings are seldom vain. 

Just at that moment Mme. Grandet, Eugenie, and Nation, 
who could not think of the cooper’s return without shudder¬ 
ing, heard the familiar knock at the door. 

“ That is papa ! ” cried Eugenie. 

She took away the saucer full of sugar, leaving one or two 
lumps on the tablecloth. Nation hurried away with the egg- 
cups. Mme. Grandet started up like a frightened fawn. 
There was a sudden panic of terror, which amazed Charles, 
who was quite at a loss to account for it. 

Why, what is the matter? ” he asked. 

My father is coming in,” explained Eugdnie. 

Well, and what then ? ” 

M. Grandet entered the room, gave one sharp glance at the 
table, and another at Charles. He saw how it was at once. 

“ Aha! you are making a fete for your nephew. Good, 
very good, oh ! very good, indeed ! ” he said, without stam¬ 
mering. ** When the cat is away, the mice may play.” 

** F&te? ” thought Charles, who had not the remotest con¬ 
ception of the state of affairs in the Grandet household. 

Bring me my glass, Nanon,” said the good man. 

Eugenie went for the glass. Grandet drew from his waist¬ 
coat pocket a large clasp-knife with a stag’s horn handle, cut 
a slice of bread, buttered it slowly and sparingly, and began 
to eat as he stood. Just then Charles put some sugar into his 
coffee ; this called Grandet’s attention to the pieces of sugar 
on the table ; he looked hard at his wife, who turned pale, 
and came a step or two towards him ; he bent down and said 
in the poor woman’s ear— 

Where did all that sugar come from ? ” 

** Nanon went out to Fessard’s for some; there was none in 
the house.” 

It is impossible to describe the painful interest that this 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


dumb show possessed for the three women; Nanon had left 
her kitchen, and was looking into the dining-room to see how 
things went there. Charles meanwhile tasted his coffee, 
found it rather strong, and looked round for another piece of 
sugar, but Grandet had already pounced upon it and taken it 
away. 

“ What do you want, nephew ? ” the old man inquired. 

‘‘ The sugar.” 

“Pour in some more milk if your coffee is too strong,” 
answered the master of the house. 

Eugenie took up the saucer, of which Grandet had pre¬ 
viously taken possession, and set it on the table, looking 
quietly at her father the while. Truly, the fair Parisian who 
exerts all the strength of her weak arms to help her lover to 
escape by a ladder of silken cords, displays less courage than 
Eugenie showed when she put the sugar upon the table. The 
Parisian will have her reward. She will proudly exhibit the 
bruises on a round white arm, her lover will bathe them with 
tears and cover them with kisses, and pain will be extinguished 
in bliss; but Charles had not the remotest conception of what 
his cousin endured for him, or of the horrible dismay that 
filled her heart as she met her father’s angry eyes; he would 
never even know of her sacrifice. 

“You are eating nothing, wife! ” 

The poor bond-slave went to the table, cut a piece of bread 
in fear and trembling, and took a pear. Eugenie, grown 
reckless, offered the grapes to her father, saying as she did so— 

“Just try some of my fruit, papa! You will take some, 
will you not, cousin ? I brought those pretty grapes down on 
purpose for you.” 

“Oh! if they could have their way, they would turn 
Saumur upside down for you, nephew ! As soon as you have 
finished we will take a turn in the garden together ; I have 
some things to tell you that would take a deal of sugar to 
sweeten them.” 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


87 


Eugenie and her mother both gave Charles a look, which 
the young man could not mistake. 

“ What do you mean by that, uncle ? Since my mother 
died-” (here his voice softened a little) “ there is no mis¬ 
fortune possible for me-” 

“ Who can know what afflictions God may send to make 
trial of us, nephew ? ” said his aunt. 

‘‘Tut, tut, tut,” muttered Grandet, “here you are begin¬ 
ning with your folly already ! I am sorry to see that you 
have such white hands, nephew.” 

He displayed the fists, like shoulders of mutton, with which 
nature had terminated his own arms. 

“ That is the sort of hand to rake the crowns together! 
You put the kind of leather on your feet that we used to make 
pocket-books of to keep bills in. That is the way you have 
been brought up. That’s bad ! that’s bad ! ” 

“ What do you mean, uncle? I’ll be hanged if I under¬ 
stand one word of this.” 

“Come along,” said Grandet. 

The miser shut his knife with a snap, drained his glass, and 
opened the door. 

“ Oh ! keep up your courage, cousin ! ” 

Something in the girl’s voice sent a sudden chill through 
Charles \ he followed his formidable relative with dreadful 
misgivings. Eugenie and her mother and Nanon went into 
the kitchen ; an uncontrollable anxiety led them to watch the 
two actors in the scene which was about to take place in the 
damp little garden. 

Uncle and nephew walked together in silence at first. 
Grandet felt the situation to be a somewhat awkward one ; not 
that he shrank at all from telling Charles of his father’s death, 
but he felt a kind of pity for a young man left in this way 
without a penny in the world, and he cast about for phrases 
that should break this cruel news as gently as might be. 
“ You have lost your father ! ” he could say that; there was 




88 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


nothing in that; fathers usually predecease their children. 
But, ‘‘You have not a penny ! ” All the woes of the world 
were summed up in those words, so for the third time the 
worthy man walked the whole length of the path in the centre 
of the garden, crunching the gravel beneath his heavy boots, 
and no word was said. 

At all great crises in our lives, any sudden joy or great sor¬ 
row, there comes a vivid consciousness of our surroundings 
that stamps them on the memory forever; and Charles, with 
every faculty strained and intent, saw the box-edging to the 
borders, the falling autumn leaves, the mouldering walls, the 
gnarled and twisted boughs of the fruit-trees, and till his 
dying day every picturesque detail of the little garden came 
back with the memory of the supreme hour of that early 
sorrow. 

“It is very fine, very warm,” said Grandet, drawing in a 
deep breath of air. 

“Yes, uncle, but why-” 

“ Well, my boy,” his uncle resumed, “ I have some bad 
news for you. Your father is very ill-” 

“ What am I doing here ? ” cried Charles. “ Nanon ! ” 
he shouted, “ order post-horses ! I shall be sure to find a 
carriage of some sort in the place, I suppose,” he added, 
turning to his uncle, who had not stirred from where he 
stood. 

“ Horses and carriage are of no use,” Grandet answered, 
looking at Charles, who immediately stared straight before 
him in silence. “ Yes, my poor boy, you guess what has 
happened ; he is dead. But that is nothing; there is some¬ 
thing worse; he has shot himself through the head-” 

My father?^' 

“ Yes, but that is nothing either. The newspapers are dis¬ 
cussing it, as if it were any business of theirs. There, read 
for yourself.” 

Grandet had borrowed Cruchot’s paper, and now he laid 




EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


89 


the fatal paragraph before Charles. The poor young fellow— 
he was only a lad as yet—made no attempt to hide his emo¬ 
tion, and burst into tears. 

“Come, that is better,” said Grandet to himself. “That 
look in his eyes frightened me. He is crying ; he will pull 
through. Never mind, my poor nephew,” Grandet resumed 
aloud, not knowing whether Charles heard him or no, that 
is nothing, you will get over it, but-” 

“ Never ! never ! My father ! my father ! ” 

“ He has ruined you; you are penniless.” 

“ What is that to me. Where is my father ?-my father!” 

The sound of his sobbing filled the little garden, reverberated 
in ghastly echoes from the walls. Tears are as infectious as 
laughter; the three women wept with pity for him. Charles 
broke from his uncle without waiting to hear more, and 
sprang into the yard, found tlie staircase, and fled to his own 
room, where he flung himself across the bed and buried his 
face in the bedclothes, that he might give way to his grief in 
solitude as far as possible from these relations. 

“ Let him alone till the first shower is over,” said Grandet, 
going back to the parlor. Eugenie and her mother had hastily 
returned to their places, had dried their eyes, and were sewing 
with cold trembling fingers. 

“But that fellow is good for nothing,” went on Grandet; 
“ he is so taken up with dead folk that he doesn’t even think 
about the money.” 

Eugenie shuddered to hear the most sacred of sorrow' 
spoken of in such a way ; from that moment she began to 
criticise her father. Charles’ sobs, smothered though they 
were, rang through that house of echoes; the sounds seemed 
to come from under the earth, a heartrending wail that grew 
fainter towards the end of the day, and only ceased as night 
drew on. 

“ Poor boy I ” said Mme. Grandet. 

It was an unfortunate remark I M. Grandet looked at his 

D 



90 


EUGENIE GRANDEE. 


wife, then at Eugenie, then at the sugar basin; he recollected 
the sumptuous breakfast prepared that morning for their 
unhappy kinsman, and planted himself in the middle of the 
room. 

‘‘Oh! by-the-by,” he said, in his usual cool, deliberate 
way, “ I hope you will not carry your extravagance any 
farther, Mme. Grandet; I do not give you MY money for you 
to squander it on sugar for that young rogue.” 

“ Mother had nothing whatever to do with it,” said 
Eugdnie. “ It was I-” 

“Because you are come of age,” Grandet interrupted his 
daughter, “ you think you can set yourself to thwart me, I 
suppose. Mind what you are about, Eugenie-” 

“ But, father, your own brother’s son ought not to have to 
go without sugar in your house.” 

“ Tut, tut, tut, tut! ” came from the cooper in a cadence 
of four semitones. “ ’Tis ‘ my nephew ’ here, and ‘ my 
brother’s son ’ there; Charles is nothing to us; he has not a 
brass farthing. His father is a bankrupt, and when the young 
sprig has cried as much as he wishes, he shall clear out of this ; 
I will not have my house turned topsy-turvy for him.” 

“ What is a bankrupt, father?” asked Eugenie. 

“A bankrupt,” replied her father, “ is guilty of the most 
dishonorable action that can dishonor a man.” 

“ It must be a very great sin,” said Mme. Grandet, “ and 
our brother will perhaps be eternally lost.” 

“There you are with your preachments,” her husband 
retorted, shrugging his shoulders. “ A bankrupt, Eugenie,” 
her father continued, “ is a thief whom the law unfortunately 
takes under its protection. People trusted Guillaume Grandet 
with their goods, confiding in his character for fair-dealing 
and honesty ; he has taken all they have, and left them noth¬ 
ing but the eyes in their heads to cry over their losses with. 
A bankrupt is worse than a highwayman ; a highwayman sets 
upon you, and you have a chance to defend yourself \ he risks 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 91 

his life besides, while the other-Charles is disgraced, in 

fact.” 

The words filled the poor girl’s heart \ they weighed upon 
her with all their weight; she herself was so scrupulously 
conscientious ; no flower in the depths of a forest had grown 
more delicately free from spot or stain ; she knew none of 
the maxims of worldly wisdom, and nothing of its quibbles 
and its sophistries. So she accepted her father’s cruel defini¬ 
tion and sweeping statements as to bankrupts; he drew no 
distinction between a fraudulent bankruptcy and a failure 
from unavoidable causes, and how should she? 

But, father, could you not have prevented this misfor¬ 
tune?” 

My brother did not ask my advice; besides, his liabilities 
amount to four millions.” 

“How much is a million, father?” asked Eugdnie, with 
the simplicity of a child who would fain have its wish fulfilled 
at once. 

“A million?” queried Grandet. “Why, it is a million 
francs, four hundred thousand five-franc pieces; there are 
twenty sous in a franc, and it takes five francs of twenty sous 
each to make a five-franc piece.” 

: ^^Mon Dieu ! Mon Dieu ! ” cried Eugenie, “how came my 
uncle to have four millions of his ov/n ? Is there really any¬ 
body in France who has so many millions as that? ” 

Grandet stroked his daughter’s chin and smiled. The wen 
seemed to grow larger. 

“What will become of cousin Charles?” 

“ He will set out for the East Indies, and try to make a 
fortune. That is his father’s wish.” 

“ But has he any money to go with ? ” 

“ I shall pay his passage out as far as-yes-as far as 

Nantes.” 

Eugenie sprang up and flung her arms about her father’s 
neck. 



92 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


‘‘Oh ! father,” she said, “ you are good ! ” 

Her warm embrace embarrassed Grandet somewhat, per¬ 
haps, too, his conscience was not quite at ease. 

“Does it take a long while to make a million?” she 
asked. 

“Lord ! yes,” said the cooper; “you know what a Napo¬ 
leon is; well, then, it takes fifty thousand of them to make a 
million.” 

“ Mamma, we will have a novena said for him.” 

“That was what I was thinking,” her mother replied. 

“Just like you! always thinking how to spend money. 
Really, one might suppose that we had any amount of money 
to throw away I ” 

As he spoke, a sound of low hoarse sobbing, more ominous 
than any which had preceded it, came from the garret. Eu¬ 
genie and her mother shuddered. 

“Nanoh,” called Grandet, “go up and see that he is not 
killing himself.” 

“Look here I you two,” he continued, turning to his wife 
and daughter, whose cheeks grew white at his tones, “ there 
is to be no nonsense, mind 1 I am leaving the house. I am 
going round to see the Dutchmen who are going to-day. 
Then I shall go to Cruchot and have a talk with him about 
all this.” 

He went out. As soon as the door closed upon Grandet, 
Eugenie and her mother breathed more freely. The girl had 
never felt constraint in her father’s presence until that morn¬ 
ing ; but a few hours had wrought rapid changes in her ideas 
and feelings. 

“ Mamma, how many louis is a hogshead of wine worth ? ” 

“ Your father gets something between a hundred and a 
hundred and fifty francs for his; sometimes two hundred, I 
believe, from what I have heard him say.” 

“ And would there be fourteen hundred hogsheads in a 
vintage? ” 


EUGENIE GRANDEE 


93 


I don’t know how many there are, child, upon my word ; 
your father never talks about business to me.” 

But, anyhow, papa must be rich.” 

May be. But M. Ciuchot told me that your father 
bought Froidfond two years ago. That would be a heavy pull 
on him.” 

Eugenie, now at a loss as to her father’s wealth, went no 
farther with her arithmetic. 

“ He did not even so much as see me, the poor dear ! ” 
said Nanon on her return. “ He is lying there on his bed 
like a calf, crying like a Magdalen; you never saw the like! 
Poor young man, what can be the matter with him? ” 

“Let us go up at once and comfort him, mamma; if we 
hear a knock, we will come downstairs.” 

There was something in the musical tones of her daughter’s 
voice which Mme. Grandet could not resist. Eugenie was 
sublime ; she was a girl no longer, she was a woman. With 
beating hearts they climbed the stairs and went together to 
Charles’ room. The door was open. The young man saw 
nothing, and heard nothing; he was absorbed in his grief, an 
inarticulate cry broke from him now and again. 

“ How he loves his father! ” said Eugenie in a low voice, 
and in her tone there was an unmistakable accent which be¬ 
trayed the passion in her heart, and hopes of which she herself 
was unaware. Mme. Grandet, with the quick instinct of a 
mother’s love, glanced at her daughter and spoke in a low 
voice in her ear. 

“ Take care,” she said, “ or you may love him.” 

“Love him!” said Eugenie. “Ah! if you only knew 
what my father said.” 

Charles moved slightly as he lay, and saw his aunt and 
cousin. 

“ I have lost my father,” he cried; “ my poor father ! If 
he had only trusted me and told me about his losses, we 
might have worked together to repair them. Mon Dieu ! 


94 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


my kind father ! I was so sure that I should see him again, 
and I said good-bye so carelessly, I am afraid, never think¬ 
ing-” 

His words were interrupted by sobs. 

“ We will surely pray for him,” said Mine. Grandet. 
“ Submit yourself to the will of God.” 

“Take courage, cousin,” said Eugenie gently; “nothing 
can give your father back to you ; you must now think how 
to save your honor-” 

A woman always has her wits about her, even in her capa¬ 
city of comforter, and with instinctive tact Eugenie sought to 
divert her cousin’s mind from his sorrow by leading him to 
think about himself. 

“ My honor? ” cried the young man, hastily pushing back 
the hair from his eyes. He sat upright upon the bed, and 
folded his arms. “Ah ! true. My uncle said that my father 
had failed.” 

He hid his face in his hands with a heartrending cry of 
pain. 

“Leave me! leave me! cousin Eugenie,” he entreated. 
“ Oh ! God, forgive my father, for he must have been terribly 
unhappy ! ” 

There was something in the sight of this young sorrow, this 
utter abandonment of grief, that was horribly engaging. It 
was a sorrow that shrank from the gaze of others, and Charles’ 
gesture of entreaty that they should leave him to himself was 
understood by Eugenie and her mother. They went silently 
downstairs again, took their places by the great window, and 
sewed on for nearly an hour without a word to each other. 

Eugenie had looked round the room ; it was a stolen 
glance. In one of those hasty surveys by which a girl sees 
everything in a moment, she had noticed the pretty trifles on 
the toilet-table—the scissors, the razors mounted with gold. 
The gleams of splendor and luxury, seen amidst all this 
misery, made Charles still more interesting in her eyes, per- 




EUGENIE GRANDET. 


95 


haps by the very force of the contrast. Their life had been 
so lonely and so quiet; such an event as this, with its pain¬ 
ful interest, had never broken the monotony of their lives, 
little had occurred to stir their imagination, and now this 
tragical drama was being enacted under their eyes. 

“Mamma,” said Eugenie, “shall we wear mourning?” 

“Your father will decide that,” replied Mme. Grandet, 
and once more they sewed in silence. Eugenie’s needle 
moved with a mechanical regularity, which betrayed her pre¬ 
occupation of mind. The first wish of this adorable girl was 
to share her cousin’s mourning. About four o’clock a sharp 
knock at the door sent a sudden thrill of terror through Mme. 
Grandet. 

“What can have brought your father back?” she said to 
her daughter. 

The vine-grower came in in high good-humor. He rubbed 
his hands so energetically that nothing but a skin like leather 
could have borne it, and indeed his hands were tanned like 
Russia leather, though the fragrant pine-rosin and incense 
had been omitted in the process. For a time he walked up 
and down and looked at the weather, but at last his secret 
escaped him. 

“ I have hooked them, wife,” he said, without stammering; 
“ I have them safe. Our wine is sold ! The Dutchmen and 
Belgians were setting out this morning; I hung about in the 
market-place in front of their inn, looking as simple as I 
could. What’s-his-name—you know the man—came up to 
me. All the best growers are hanging off and holding their 
vintages; they wanted to wait, and so they can, I have not 
hindered them. Our Belgian was at his wits’ end, I saw that. 
So the bargain was struck; he is taking the whole of our vin¬ 
tage at two hundred francs the hogshead, half of it paid down 
at once in gold, and I have promissory notes for the rest. 
There are six louis for you. In three months’ time prices 
will go down.” 


96 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


The last words came out quietly enough, but there was 
something so sardonic in the tone that if the little knots of 
growers, then standing in the twilight in the market-place of 
Saumur, in dismay at the news of Grandet’s sale, had heard 
him speak, they would have shuddered; there would have 
been a panic on the market—wines would have fallen fifty 
per cent. 

“You have a thousand hogsheads this year, father, have 
you not?” asked Eugdnie. 

“ Yes, little girl.” 

These words indicated that the cooper’s joy had indeed 
reached high-water mark* 

“ That will mean two hundred thousand francs?” 

“Yes, Mademoiselle Grandet.” 

“Well’ then, father, you can easily help Charles.” 

The surprise, the wrath, and bewilderment with which 
Belshazzar beheld Mene, Mene^ Tekel^ Upharsin^ written upon 
his palace wall were as nothing compared with Grandet’s 
cold fury; he had forgotten all about Charles, and now he 
found that all his daughter’s inmost thoughts were of his 
nephew, and that this arithmetic of hers referred to him. It 
was exasperating. 

“ Look here ! ” he thundered ; “ ever since that scapegrace 
set foot in my house everything has gone askew. You take it 
upon yourselves to buy sugar-plums, and make a great set-out 
for him. I will not have these doings. I should think, at 
my age, I ought to know what is right and proper to do. At 
any rate, I have no need to take lessons from my daughter, 
nor from any one else. I shall do for my nephew whatever it 
is right and proper for me to do; it is no business of yours, 
you need not meddle in it. And now, as for you, Eugenie,” 
he added, turning towards her, “ if you say another word 
about it, I will send you and Nanon off to the Abbey at 
Noyers, see if I don’t. Where is that boy? has he come 
downstairs yet?” 


EUG&NIE GRANDET, 


97 


^*No, dear,” answered Mme. Grandet. 

“ Why, what is he doing then ? ” 

‘‘He is crying for his father,” Eugenie said. 

Grandet looked at his daughter, and found nothing to say. 
There was some touch of the father even in him. He took 
one or two turns up and down, and then went straight to 
his strong-room to think over possible investments. He had 
thoughts of buying consols. Those two thousand acres of 
woodland had brought him in six hundred thousand francs; 
then there was the money from the sale of the poplars, there 
was last year’s income from various sources, and this year’s 
savings, to say nothing of the bargain which he had just con¬ 
cluded ; so that, leaving those two hundred thousand francs 
out of the question, he possessed a lump sum of nine hundred 
thousand livres. That twenty per cent., to be made in so 
short a time upon his outlay, tempted him. Consols stood at 
seventy. He jotted down his calculations on the margin of 
the paper that had brought the news of his brother’s death; 
the moans of his nephew sounded in his ears the while, but 
he did not hear them ; he went on with his work until Nanon 
thumped vigorously on the thick wall to summon her master 
to dinner. On the last step of the staircase beneath the arch¬ 
way, Grandet paused and thought. 

“ There is the interest beside the eight per cent.—I will do 
it. Fifteen hundred thousand francs in two years’ time, in 
gold from Paris too, full weight. Well, what has become of 
my nephew ? ” 

“ He said he did not want anything,” replied Nanon. “ He 
ought to eat, or he will fall ill.” 

“ It is so much saved,” was her master’s comment. 

“Lord ! yes,” she replied. 

“ Pooh ! he will not keep on crying for ever. Hunger drives 
the wolf from the woods.” 

Dinner was a strangely silent meal. When the cloth had 
been removed, Mme. Grandet spoke to her husband: 

7 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


We ought to go into mourning, dear.” 

''Really, Mme. Grandet, you must be hard up for ways of 
getting rid of money. Mourning is in the heart; it is not 
put on with clothes.” 

“ But for a brother mourning is indispensable, and the 
Church bids us-” 

“ Then buy mourning out of your six louis; a band of crape 
will do for me; you can get me a band of crape.” 

Eugenie said nothing, and raised her eyes to heaven. Her 
generous instincts, so long repressed and dormant, had been 
suddenly awakened, and every kindly thought had been harshly 
checked as it had arisen. Outwardly this evening passed just 
as thousands of others had passed in their monotonous lives, 
but for the two women it was the most painful that they had 
ever spent. Eugenie sewed without raising her head; she 
took no notice of the workbox which Charles had looked at 
so scornfully- yesterday evening. Mme. Grandet knitted away 
at her cuffs. Grandet sat twirling his thumbs, absorbed in 
schemes which should one day bring about results that would 
startle Saumur. Four hours went by. Nobody dropped in 
to see them. As a matter of fact, the whole town was ringing 
v/ith the news of Grandet’s sharp practice, following on the 
news of his brother’s failure and his nephew’s arrival. So im¬ 
peratively did Saumur feel the need to thrash these matters 
thoroughly out, that all the vine-growers, great or small, were 
assembled beneath the des Grassins’ roof, and frightful were 
the imprecations which were launched at the head of their late 
mayor. 

Nanon was spinning; the whirr of her wheel was the only 
sound in the great room beneath the gray-painted rafters. 

Our tongues don’t go very fast,” she said, showing her 
large teeth, white as blanched almonds. 

“There is no call for them to go,” answered Grandet, 
roused from his calculations. 

He beheld a vision of the future—he saw eight millions in 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 99 

three years’ time—he had set forth on a long voyage upon a 
golden sea. 

Let us go to bed. I will go up and wish my nephew a 
good-night from you all, and see if he wants anything.” 

Mme. Grandet stayed on the landing outside her room-door 
to hear what her worthy husband might say to Charles. 
Eugenie, bolder than her mother, went a step or two up the 
second flight. 

“Well, nephew, you are feeling unhappy? Yes, cry, it is 
only natural, a father is a father. But we must bear our 
troubles patiently. Whilst you have been crying, I have been 
thinking for you; I am a kind uncle, you see. Come, don’t 
lose heart. Will you take a little wine? Wine costs notliing 
at Saumur; it is common here; they offer it as they might 
offer you a cup of tea in the Indies. But you are all in the 
dark,” Grandet went on. “That’s bad, that’s bad; one 
ought to see what one is doing.” 

Grandet went to the chimney-piece. 

“What!” he cried, “a wax-candle! Where the devil 
have they fished that from? I believe the wenches would pull 
up the floor of my house to cook eggs for that boy.” 

Mother and daughter, hearing these words, fled to their 
rooms, and crept into their beds like frightened mice. 

“ Mme. Grandet, you have a lot of money somewhere, it 
seems,” said the vine-grower, walking into his wife’s rooms. 

“I am saying my prayers, dear; wait a little,” faltered the 
poor mother. 

“ The devil take your pious notions ! ” growled Grandet. 

Misers have no belief in a life to come, the present is all in 
all to them. But if this thought gives an insight into the 
miser’s springs of action, it possesses a wider application, it 
throws a pitiless light upon our own era—for money is the one 
all-powerful force, ours is pre-eminently the epoch when 
money is the lawgiver, socially and politically. Books and 
institutions, theories and practice, all alike combine to weaken 


1. OF C. 


100 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


the belief in a future life, the foundation on which the social 
edifice has been slowly reared for eighteen hundred years. 
The grave has almost lost its terrors for us. That future which 
awaited us beyond the requiem has been transported into the 
present, and one hope and one ambition possesses us all—to 
pass per fas ei nefas into this earthly paradise of luxury, vanity, 
and pleasure, to deaden the soul and mortify the body for a 
brief possession of this promised land, just as in other days 
men were found willing to lay down their lives and to suffer 
martyrdom for the hope of eternal bliss. This thought can 
be read at large; it is stamped upon our age, which asks of 
the voter—the man who makes the laws—not “What do you 
think? ” but “ What can you pay? ” And what will become 
of us when this doctrine has been handed down from the 
bourgeoisie to the people ? 

“ Mme. Grandet, have you finished?” asked the cooper. 

“I am praying for you, dear.” 

“Very well, good-night. To-morrow morning I shall have 
something to say to you.” 

Poor woman ! she betook herself to sleep like a school-boy 
who has not learned his lessons, and sees before him the angry 
face of the master when he wakes. Sheer terror led her to 
wrap the sheets about her head to shut out all sounds, but 
just at that moment she felt a kiss on her forehead; it was 
Eugenie who had slipped into the room in the darkness, and 
stood there barefooted in her nightdress. 

“Oh! mother, my kind mother,” she said, “I shall tell 
him to-morrow morning that it was all my doing.” 

“No, don’t; if you do, he will send you away to Noyers. 
Let me manage it; he will not eat me, after all.” 

“ Oh ! mamma, do you hear? ” 

“What?” 

“ He is crying still.” 

“ Go back to bed, dear. The floor is damp, it will strike 
cold to your feet.” 


EUGENIE GRANDET, 


101 


So ended the solemn day, which had brought for the poor 
wealthy heiress a lifelong burden of sorrow ; never again would 
Eugenie Grandet sleep as soundly or as lightly as heretofore. 
It not seldom happens that at some time in their lives this or 
that human being will act literally “unlike himself,” and yet 
in very truth in accordance with his nature. Is it not rather 
that we form our hasty conclusions of him without the aid of 
such light as psychology affords, without attempting to trace 
the mysterious birth and growth of the causes which led to 
these unforeseen results? And this passion, which had its 
roots in the depths of Eugenie’s nature, should perhaps be 
studied as if it were the delicate fibre of some living organism 
to discover the secret of its growth. It was a passion that 
would influence her whole life, so that one day it would be 
sneeringly called a malady. Plenty of people would prefer 
to consider a catastrophe improbable rather than undertake 
the task of tracing the sequence of the events that led to it, 
to discovering how the links of the chain were forged one by 
one in the mind of the actor. In this case, Eugenie’s past 
life will suffice to keen observers of human nature; her artless 
impulsiveness, her sudden outburst of tenderness will be no 
surprise to them. Womanly pity, that treacherous feeling, 
had filled her soul but the more completely because her life 
had been so uneventful that it had never been so called forth 
before. 

So the trouble and excitement of the day disturbed her 
rest; she woke again and again to listen for any sound from 
her cousin’s room, thinking that she still heard the moans 
that all day long had vibrated through her heart. Sometimes 
she seemed to see him lying up there, dying of grief; some¬ 
times she dreamed that he was being starved to death. To¬ 
wards morning she distinctly heard a terrible cry. She dressed 
herself at once, and in the dim light of the dawn fled noise¬ 
lessly up the stairs to her cousin’s room. The door stood 
open, the wax-candle had burned itself down to the socket. 


102 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


Nature had asserted herself; Charles, still dressed, was sleep¬ 
ing in the armchair, with his head fallen forward on the bed; 
he had been dreaming as famished people dream. Eugenie 
admired the fair young face. It was flushed and tear-stained; 
the eyelids were swollen with weeping; he seemed to be still 
crying in his sleep, and Eugenie’s own tears fell fast. Some 
dim feeling that his cousin was present awakened Charles; he 
opened his eyes, and saw her distress. 

“Pardon me, cousin,” he said dreamily. Evidently he 
had lost all reckoning of time, and did not know where he 
was. 

“There are hearts here that feel for you, cousin, and we 
thought that you might perhaps want something. You should 
go to bed; you will tire yourself out if you sleep like that.” 

“ Yes,” he said, “ that is true.” 

“ Good-bye,” she said, and fled, half in confusion, half-glad 
that she had come. Innocence alone dares to be thus bold, 
and virtue armed with knowledge weighs its actions as care¬ 
fully as vice. 

Eugenie had not trembled in her cousin’s presence, but 
when she reached her own room again she could scarcely 
stand. Her ignorant life had suddenly come to an end ; she 
remonstrated with herself, and blamed herself again and 
again. “ What will he think of me? He will believe that I 
love him.” Yet she knew that this was exactly what she 
wished him to believe. Love spoke plainly within her, know¬ 
ing by instinct how love calls forth love. The moment when 
she stole into her cousin’s room became a memorable event 
in the girl’s lonely life. Are there not thoughts and deeds 
which, in love, are for some souls like a solemn betrothal ? 

An hour later she went to her mother’s room, to help her 
to dress, as she always did. Then the two women went down¬ 
stairs and took their places by the window, and waited for 
Grandet’s coming in the anxiety which freezes or burns. 
Some natures cower, and others grow reckless, when a scene 


EUGENIE GRANDET 


103 


or painful agitation is in prospect; the feeling of dread is so 
widely felt that domestic animals will cry out when the 
slightest pain is inflicted on them as a punishment, while the 
same creature if hurt inadvertently will not utter a sound. 

The cooper came downstairs, spoke in an absent-minded 
way to nis wife, kissed Eugenie, and sat down to table. He 
seemed to have forgotten last night’s threats. 

‘'What has become of my nephew? The child is not 
much in the way.” 

“He is asleep, sir,” said Nanon. 

“So much the better, he won’t want a wax-candle for 
that,” said Grandet facetiously. 

His extraordinary mildness and satirical humor puzzled 
Mine. Grandet; she looked earnestly at her husband. The 
good man—here, perhaps, it may be observed that in Touraine, 
Anjou, Poitou, and Brittany the designation good man (bon- 
homme), which has been so often applied to Grandet, conveys 
no idea of merit; it is allowed to people of the worst temper 
as well as to good-natured idiots, and is applied without dis¬ 
tinction to any man of a certain age—the good man, there¬ 
fore, took up his hat and gloves with the remark— 

“lam going to have a look round in the market-place; I 
want to meet the Cruchots.” 

“ Eugenie, your father certainly has something on his 
mind.” 

As a matter of fact, Grandet always slept but little, and 
was wont to spend half the night in revolving and maturing 
schemes, a process by which his views, observations, and plans 
gained amazingly in clearness and precision ; indeed, this was 
the secret of that constant success which was the admiration 
of Saumur. Time and patience combined will effect most 
things, and the man who accomplishes much is the man with 
the strong will who can wait. The miser’s life is a constant 
exercise of every human faculty in the service of a personality. 
He believes in self-love and interest, and in no other motives 


104 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


of action, but interest is in some sort another form of seif- 
love, to wit, a practical form dealing with the tangible and the 
concrete, and both forms are comprised in one master-passion, 
for self-love and interest are but two manifestations of egoism. 
Hence, perhaps, the prodigious interest which a miser excites 
when cleverly put upon the stage. What man is utterly 
without ambition ? And what social ambition can be obtained 
without money ? Every one has something in common with 
this being; he is a personification of humanity, and yet is 
revolting to all the feelings of humanity. 

Grandet really “had something on his mind,” as his wife 
used to say. In Grandet, as in every miser, there was a keen 
relish for the game, a constant craving to play men off one 
against another for his own benefit, to mulct them of their 
crowns without breaking the law. And did not every victim 
who fell into his clutches renew his sense of power, his just 
contempt for the weak of the earth who let themselves fall 
such an easy prey ? Ah ! who has understood the meaning 
of the lamb that lies in peace at the feet of God, that most 
touching symbol of meek victims who are doomed to suffer 
here below, and of the future that awaits them hereafter, of 
weakness and suffering glorified at last ? But here on earth 
it is quite otherwise ; the lamb is the miser’s legitimate prey, 
and by him (when it is fat enough) it is contemptuously 
penned, killed, cooked, and eaten. On money and on this 
feeling of contemptuous superiority, we may say, the miser 
thrives. 

During the night this excellent man’s ideas had taken an 
entirely new turn ; hence his unusual mildness. He had been 
weaving a web to entangle them in Paris; he would envelop 
them in its toils, they should be as clay in his hands; they 
should hope and tremble, come and go, toil and sweat, and ) 
all for his amusement, all for the old cooper in the dingy ! 
room at the head of the worm-eaten staircase in the old house ! 
at Saumur; it tickled his sense of humor. ' ^ 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


105 


He had been thinking about his nephew. He wanted to 
save his dead brother’s name from dishonor in a way that 
should not cost a penny either to his nephew or to himself. 
He was about to invest his money for three years, his mind 
was quite at leisure from his own affairs; he really needed 
some outlet for his malicious energy, and here was an oppor¬ 
tunity supplied by his brother’s failure. The claws were idle, 
he had nothing to squeeze between them, so he would pound 
the Parisians for Charles’ benefit, and exhibit himself in the 
light of an excellent brother at a very cheap rate. As a 
matter of fact, the honor of the family name counted for very 
little with him in this matter; he looked at it from the purely 
impersonal point of view of the gambler, who likes to see a 
game well played, although it is no affair of his. The 
Cruchots were necessary to him, but he did not mean to go 
in search of them ; they should come to him. That very 
evening the comedy should begin, the main outlines were 
decided upon already, to-morrow he would be held up as an 
object of admiration all over the town, and his generosity 
should not cost him a farthing ! 

Eugenie, in her father’s absence, was free to busy herself 
openly for her cousin, to feel the pleasure of pouring out for 
him in many ways the wealth of pity that filled her heart; for 
in pity alone women are content that we should feel their 
superiority, and the sublimity of devotion is the one height 
whicli they can pardon us for leaving to them. 

Three or four times Eugenie went to listen to her cousin’s 
breathing, that she might know whether he was awake or still 
sleeping ; and when she was sure that he was rising, she 
turned her attention to his breakfast, and cream, coffee, 
fruit, eggs, plates, and glasses were all in turn the objects 
of her especial care. She softly climbed the rickety stairs 
to listen again. Was he dressing? Was he still sobbing? 
She went to the door at last and spoke— 

Cousin ! ” 


lOG 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


Yes, cousin.” 

Would you rather have breakfast downstairs or up here in 
your room? ” 

“ Whichever you please.” 

“ How do you feel ? ” 

“lam ashamed to say that I am hungry.” 

This talk through the closed door was like an episode in a 
romance for Eugenie. 

“ Very well then, we will bring your breakfast up to your 
room, so that my father may not be vexed about it.” 

She sprang downstairs, and ran into the kitchen with the 
swiftness of a bird. 

“ Nanon, just go and set his room straight.” 

The familiar staircase which she had gone up and down so 
often, and which echoed with every sound, seemed no longer 
old in Eugenie’s eyes; it was radiant with light, it seemed to 
speak a language which she understood, it was young again as 
she herself was, young like the love in her heart. And the 
mother, the kind, indulgent mother, was ready to lend herself 
to her daughter’s whims, and as soon as Charles’ room was 
ready they both went thither to sit with him. Does not 
Christian charity bid us comfort the mourner ? Little relig¬ 
ious sophistries were not wanting by which the women justified 
themselves. 

Charles Grandet received the most tender and affectionate 
care. Such delicate tact and sweet kindness touched him 
very closely in his desolation; and for these two souls, they 
found a moment’s freedom from the restraint under which 
they lived ; they were at home in an atmosphere of sorrow; 
they could give him the quick sympathy of fellowship in mis¬ 
fortune. Eugenie could avail herself of the privilege of rela¬ 
tionship to set his linen in order, and to arrange the trifles 
that lay on the dressing-table; she could admire the wonder¬ 
ful knickknacks at her leisure; all the paraphernalia of 
luxury, the delicately-wrought gold and silver passed through 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


107 


her hands, her fingers dwelt lingeringly on them under the pre¬ 
text of looking closely at the workmanship. 

Charles was deeply-touched by the generous interest which 
his aunt and cousin took in him. He knew Parisian life 
quite sufficiently to know that under these circumstances his 
old acquaintances and friends would have grown cold and 
distant at once. But his trouble had brought out all the 
peculiar beauty of Eugdnie’s character, and he began to 
admire the simplicity of manner which had provoked his 
amusement but yesterday. So when Eugenie waited on her 
cousin with such frank good-will, taking from Nanon the 
earthenware bowl full of coffee and cream to set it before him 
herself, the Parisian’s eyes filled with tears ; and when he met 
her kind glance, he impulsively took her hand in his and fer¬ 
vently kissed it. 

“ Well, what is the matter now? ” she asked. 

Oh ! they are tears of gratitude,” he answered. 

Eugenie turned hastily away, took the candles from the 
chimney-piece and held them out to Nanon. 

Here,” she said, “ take these away.” 

When she could look at her cousin again, the flush was still 
on her face, but her eyes at least did not betray her, and gave 
no sign of the excess of joy that flooded her heart; yet the 
same thought was dawning in both their souls, and could be 
read in the eyes of either, and they knew that the future was 
theirs. This thrill of happiness was all the sweeter to Charles 
in his great sorrow, because it was so little expected. 

There was a knock at the door, and both the women hur¬ 
ried down to their places by the window. It was lucky for 
them that their flight downstairs was sufficiently precipitate, 
and that they were at their work when Grandet came in, for 
if he had met them beneath the archway, all his suspicions 
would be aroused at once. After the mid-day meal, which he 
took standing, the keeper, who had not yet received his 
promised reward, appeared from Froidfond, bringing with 


108 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


him a hare, some partridges shot in the park, a few eels, and 
a couple of pike sent by him from the miller’s. 

“ Aha! so here is old Cornoiller; you come just when you 
are wanted, like salt fish in Lent. Is all that fit to eat ? 

“ Yes, sir; all killed the day before yesterday.” 

“ Come, Nanon, look alive 1 Just take this, it will do for 
dinner to-day; the two Cruchots are coming.” 

Nanon opened her eyes with amazement, and stared first at 
one and then at another. 

“Oh! indeed,” she said, “and where are the herbs and 
the bacon to come from ? ” 

“Wife,” said Grandet, “let Nanon have six francs, and 
remind me to go down into the cellar to look out a bottle of 
good wine.” 

“ Well, then, M. Grandet,” the gamekeeper began (he 
wished to see the question of his salary properly settled, and 
was duly primed with a speech), “ M. Grandet-” 

“Tut, tut, tut,” said Grandet, “I know what you are 
going to say ; you are a good fellow, we will see about that 
to-morrow, I am very busy to-day. Give him five francs, 
wife,” he added, looking at Mine. Grandet, and with that he 
beat a retreat. The poor woman was only too happy to pur¬ 
chase peace at the price of eleven francs. She knew by ex¬ 
perience that Grandet usually kept quiet for a fortnight after 
he had made her disburse coin by coin the money which he 
had given her. 

“ There, Cornoiller,” she said, as she slipped ten francs into 
his hand; “we will repay you for yourservices one of these days.” 

Cornoiller had no answer ready, so he went. 

“Madame,” said Nanon, who had by this time put on 
her black bonnet and had a basket on her arm, “three francs 
will be quite enough; keep the rest. I shall manage just as 
well with three.” 

“ Let us have a good dinner, Nanon; my cousin is coming 
downstairs,” said Eugenie. 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 


109 


** There is something very extraordinary going on, I am 
sure/’ said Mme. Grandet. ‘^This makes the third time 
since we were married that your father has asked any one here 
to dinner.” 

It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon; Eugenie and 
her mother had laid the cloth and set the table for six persons, 
and the master of the house had brought up two or three 
bottles of the exquisite wines, which are jealously hoarded in 
the cellars of the vine-growing district. 

Charles came into the dining-room looking white and sad; 
there was a pathetic charm about his gestures, his face, his 
looks, the tones of his voice; his sorrow had given him the 
interesting look that women like so well, and Eugenie only 
loved him the more because his features were worn with pain. 
Perhaps, too, this trouble had brought them nearer in other 
ways. Charles was no longer the rich and handsome young 
man who lived in a sphere far beyond her ken ; he was a 
kinsman in deep and terrible distress, and sorrow is a great 
leveler. Woman has this in common with the angels—all 
suffering creatures are under her protection. 

Charles and Eugenie understood each other without a word 
being spoken on either side. The poor dandy of yesterday, 
fallen from his high estate, to-day was an orphan, who sat in 
a corner of the room, quiet, composed, and proud; but from 
time to time he met his cousin’s eyes, her kind and affection¬ 
ate glance rested on him, and compelled him to shake off his 
dark and sombre broodings, and to look forward with her to 
a future full of hope, in which she loved to think that she 
might share. 

The news of Grandet’s dinner-party caused even greater 
excitement in Saumur than the sale of his vintage, although 
this latter proceeding had been a crime of the blackest dye, 
an act of high treason against the vine-growing interest. If 
Grandet’s banquet to the Cruchots has been prompted by the 
same idea which on a memorable occasion cost Alcibiades’ 


110 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


dog its tail, history might perhaps have heard of the miser; 
but he felt himself to be above public opinion in this town 
which he exploited; he held Saumur too cheap. 

It was not long before the des Grassins heard of Guillaume 
Grandet’s violent end and impending bankruptcy. They de¬ 
termined to pay a visit to their client that evening, to condole 
with him in his affliction, and to show a friendly interest; 
while they endeavored to discover the motives which could 
have led Grandet to invite the Cruchots to dinner at such a 
time. 

Precisely at five o’clock President C. de Bonfons and his 
uncle the notary arrived, dressed up to the nines this time. 
The guests seated themselves at table, and began by attacking 
their dinner with remarkably good appetites. Grandet was 
solemn, Charles was silent, Eugenie was dumb, and Mine. 
Grandet said no more than usual; if it had been a funeral 
repast, it could not well have been less lively. When they 
rose from the table, Charles addressed his aunt and uncle— 
Will you permit me to withdraw? I have some long and 
difficult letters to write.” 

By all means, nephew.” 

When Charles had left the room, and his amiable relative 
could fairly assume that he was out of earshot and deep in his 
correspondence, Grandet gave his wife a sinister glance. 

Mme. Grandet, what we are going to say will be Greek 
to you; it is half-past seven o’clock, you ought to be off to 
bed by this time. Good-night, my daughter.” He kissed 
Eugenie, and mother and daughter left the room. 

Then the drama began. Now, if ever in his life, Grandet 
displayed all the shrewdness which he had acquired in the 
course of his long experience of men and business, and all the 
cunning which had gained him the nickname of “old fox” 
among those who had felt his teeth a little too sharply. Had 
the ambition of the late mayor of Saumur soared a little higher; 
if he had had the luck to rise to a higher social sphere, and 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


Ill 


destiny had sent him to mingle in some congress in which 
the fate of nations is at stake, the genius which he was now 
devoting to his own narrow ends would doubtless have done 
France glorious service. And yet, after all, the probability is 
that once away from Saumur the worthy cooper would have 
cut but a poor figure, and that minds, like certain plants and 
animals, are sterile when removed to a distant climate and an 
alien soil. 

M-m-monsieur le P-p-pr^sident, you were s-s-saying that 
b-b-bankruptcy-’ ’ 

Here the trick of stammering which it had pleased the vine- 
grower to assume so long ago that every one believed it to be 
natural to him (like the deafness of which he was wont to 
complain in rainy weather), grew so unbearably tedious for 
the Cruchot pair, that as they strove to catch the syllables, 
they made unconscious grimaces, moving their lips as if they 
would fain finish the words in which the cooper entangled 
both himself and them at his pleasure. 

And here, perhaps, is the fitting place to record the history 
of Grandet’s deafness and the impediment in his speech. No 
one in Anjou had better hearing or could speak Angevin French 
more clearly and distinctly than the wily vine-grower—when 
he chose. Once upon a time, in spite of all his shrewdness, 
a Jew had gotten the better of him. In the course of their dis¬ 
cussion the Israelite had applied his hand to his ear, in the 
manner of an ear-trumpet, the better to catch what was said, 
and had gibbered to such purpose in his search for a word, 
that Grandet, a victim to his own humanity, felt constrained 
to suggest to that crafty Hebrew the words and ideas of which 
the Israelite appeared to be in search, to finish himself the 
reasonings of the said Hebrew, to say for that accursed alien 
all that he ought to have said for himself, till Grandet ended 
by fairly changing places with the Jew. 

From this curious contest of wits the vine-grower did not 
emerge triumphant; indeed, for the first and last time in his 



112 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


business career he made a bad bargain. But loser though he 
was from a money point of view, he had received a great prac¬ 
tical lesson, and later on he reaped the fruits of it. Where¬ 
fore in the end he blessed the Jew who had shown him how 
to wear out the patience of an opponent, and to keep him so 
closely employed in expressing his adversary’s ideas that he 
completely lost sight of his own. The present business re¬ 
quired more deafness, more stammering, more of the mazy cir¬ 
cumlocutions in which Grandet was wont to involve himself, 
than any previous transaction in his life; for, in the first place, 
he wished to throw the responsibility of his ideas on some one 
else; some one else was to suggest his own schemes to him, 
while he was to keep himself to himself, and leave every one 
in the dark as to his real intentions. 

“ Mon-sieur de B-B-Bonfons.” (This was the second time 
in three years that he had called the younger Cruchot M. de 
Bonfons,” and the president might well consider that this was 
almost tantamount to being acknowledged as the crafty cooper’s 
son-in-law.) 

‘^You were s-s-s-saying that in certain cases, p-p-p*pro- 
ceedings in b-b-bankruptcy might be s-s-s-stopped b-b-by-” 

^‘At the instance of a Tribunal of Commerce. That is 
done everyday of the year,” said M. C. de Bonfons, guessing, 
as he thought, at old Grandet’s idea, and running away with 
it. ^‘Listen!” he said, and in the most amiable way he 
prepared to explain himself. 

” I am 1-listening,” replied the older man meekly, and his 
face assumed a demure expression; he looked like some 
small boy who is laughing in his sleeve at the schoolmaster 
while appearing to pay the most respectful attention to every 
word. 

^‘When anybody who is in a large way of business and is 
much looked up to, like your late brother in Paris, for 

instance-” 

My b-b-brother, yes.” 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 


113 


“When any one in that position is likely to find himself 
insolvent-” 

“ Ins-s-solvent, do they call it?” 

“Yes. When his failure is imminent, the Tribunal of 
Commerce, to which he is amenable (do you follow me ?) has 
power by a judgment to appoint liquidators to wind up the 
business. Liquidation is not bankruptcy, do you under¬ 
stand ? It is a disgraceful thing to be a bankrupt, but a 
liquidation reflects no discredit on a man.” 

“It is quite a d-d-d-different thing, if only it d-d-does not 
cost any more,” said Grandet. 

“ Yes. But a liquidation can be privately arranged without 
having recourse to the Tribunal of Commerce,” said the presi¬ 
dent as he took a pinch of snuff. “ How is a man declared 
bankrupt ! ” 

“Yes, how?” inquired Grandet. “I have n-n-never 
thought about it.” 

“ In the first place, he may himself file a petition and leave 
his schedule with the clerk of the court, the debtor himself 
draws it up or authorizes some one else to do so, and it is 
duly registered. Or, in the second place, his creditors may 
make him a bankrupt. But supposing the debtor does not 
file a petition, and none of his creditors make application to 
the court for a judgment declaring him bankrupt; now let us 
see what happens then ! ” 

“ Yes, let us s-s-see.” 

“ In that case, the family of the deceased, or his represen¬ 
tatives, or his residuary legatee, or the man himself (if he is 
not dead), or his friends for him (if he has absconded), liqui¬ 
date his affairs. Now, possibly, you may intend to do this in 
your brother’s case? ” inquired the president. 

“Oh! Grandet,” exclaimed the notary, “ that would be 
acting very handsomely. We .in the provinces have our 
notions of honor. If you saved your name from dishonor, 

for it is your name, you would be- 

8 



114 


eugAnie grandet. 


Sublime! ” cried the president, interrupting his uncle. 

“ Of course, my b-b-brother’s n-n-name was Grandet, 
th-that IS certain sure, I d-d-don’t deny it, and anyhow this 
1-1-1-1-liquidation would be a very g-good thing for my n-n- 
nephew in every way, and I am very f-f-fond of him. But we 
shall see. I know n-n-nothing of those sharpers in Paris, and 
their t-tricks. And here am I at S-Saumur, you see I There 
are my vine-cuttings, m-my d-d-draining; in sh-sh-short, 
there are my own af-f-fairs, to s-s-see after. I have n-n-never 
accepted a bill. What is a bill ? I have t-t-taken many a one, 
b-b-but I have n-n-never put my n-n-name to a piece of 
p-paper. You t-t-take ’em and you can d-d-d-discount ’em, 
and that is all I know. I have heard s-s-say that you can 
b-b-b-buy them-” 

“Yes,” assented the president. “You can buy bills on 
the market, less so much per cent. Do you understand? ” 

Grandet held his hand to his ear, and the president repeated 
his remark. 

“But it s-s-seems there are t-t-two s-sides to all this?” re¬ 
plied the vine-grower. “At my age, I know n-n-nothing about 
this s-s-sort of thing. I must st-top here to 1-look after the 
g-g-grapes, the vines d-d-don’t stand still, and the g-g-grapes 
have to p-pay for everything. The vintage m-must be 1-1- 
looked after before anything else. Then I have a g-great 
d-d-deal on my hands at Froidfond that I can’t p-p-possibly 
1-1-1-leave to any one else. I don’t underst-t-tand a word of all 
this; it is a p-p-pretty kettle of fish, confound it; I can’t 
1-1-lcave home tos-see after it. You s-s-s-say that to bring about 
a 1-1-liquidation I ought to be in Paris. Now you can’t be in 
t-t-two p-places at once unless you are a b-b-bird.” 

“/see what you mean,” cried the notary. “ Well, my old 
friend, you have friends, friends of long standing ready to do 
a great deal for you.” 

“Come, now! ” said the vine-grower to himself, “so you 
are making up your minds, are you? ” 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


115 


And if some one were to go to Paris, and find up your 
brother Guillaume’s largest creditor, and say to him-” 

“ Here, just 1-1-listen to me a moment,” the cooper struck 

in. “Say to him-what? S-s-something like this: ‘ M. 

Grandet of Saumur th-this, M. Grandet of Saumur th-th-that. 
He 1-1-loves his brother, he has a r-r-regard for his n-nephew; 
Grandet thinks a 1-1-lot of his f-family, he means to d-do well 
by them. He has just s-s-sold his vintage uncommonly well. 
Don’t drive the thing into b-b-b-bankruptcy, call a meeting of 
the creditors, and ap-p-point 1-1-liquidators. Then s-see what 
Grandet will do. You will do a great d-deal b-b-better for 
yourselves by coming to an arrangement than by 1-1-letting 
the 1-1-lawyers poke their noses into it.' That is how it is, 
eh?” 

“ Quite so ! ” said the president. 

“ Because, look you here. Monsieur de Bon-Bon-Bonfons, 
you must 1-1-look before you 1-1-1-leap. And you can’t d-do 
more than you can. A big af-f-fair like this wants 1-1-looking 
into, or you may ru-ru-ruin yourself. That is so, isn’t it, eh?” 

“ Certainly,” said the president, “ I myself am of the opin¬ 
ion that in a few months’ time you could buy up the debts for 
a fixed sum and pay by installments. Aha! you can trail a 
dog a long way with a bit of bacon. When a man has not 
been declared bankrupt, as soon as the bills are in your hands, 
you will be as white as snow.” 

“As s-s-s-snow?” said Grandet, holding his hand to his 
ear. “S-s-s-snow. I don’t underst-t-tand.” 

“Why, then, just listen to me! ” cried the president. 

“I am 1-1-listening-” 

“ A bill of exchange is a commodity subject to fluctuations 
in value. This is a deduction from Jeremy Bentham’s theory 
of interest. He was a publicist who showed conclusively that 
the prejudices entertained against money-lenders were irra¬ 
tional.” 

“ Bless me ! ” put in Grandet. 





116 


EUG&NIE GRANDET, 


“And seeing that, according to Bentham, money itself is a 
commodity, and that which money represents is no less a 
commodity,” the president went on ^ “and since it is ob¬ 
vious that the commodity called a bill of exchange is subject 
to the same laws of supply and demand that control produc¬ 
tion of ail kinds, a bill of exchange bearing this or that 
signature, like this or that article of commerce, is scarce or 
plentiful in the market, commands a high premium or is worth 

nothing at all. Wherefore the decision of this court- 

There! how stupid I am, I beg your pardon; I mean I am 
of the opinion that you could easily buy up your brother’s 
debts for twenty-five per cent of their value.” 

“You m-m-m-mentioned Je-je-je-jeremy Ben-” 

“ Bentham, an Englishman.” 

“ That is a Jeremiah who will save us many lamentations in 
business matters,” said the notary, laughing. 

“The English s-s-sometimes have s-s-s-sensible notions,” 
said Grandet. “Then, according to B-Bentham, how if my 
b-b-brother’s b-bills are worth n-n-n-nothing? If I am right, 

it looks to me as if-the creditors would-n-no, they 

wouldn’t-1 undefst-t-tand.” 

“ Let me explain all this to you,” said the president. “ In 
law, if you hold all the outstanding bills of the firm of 
Grandet, your brother, his heirs and assigns, would owe no 
one a penny. So far, so good.” 

“Good,” echoed Grandet. 

“And in equity; suppose that your brother’s bills were 
negotiated upon the market (negotiated, do you understand 
the meaning of that term?) at a loss of so much per cent.; 
and suppose one of your friends happened to be passing, and 
bought up the bills; there would have been no physical force 
brought to bear upon the creditors, they gave them up of their 
own free-will, and the estate of the late Grandet of Paris 
would be clear in the eye of the law.” 

“True,” stuttered the cooper, “ b-b-business is business. 




EUGJtNIE GRANDET 


117 


So that is s-s-s-settled. But, for all that, you understand that 
it is a d-d-difficult matter. I have not the m-m-money, nor 
have I the t-t-t-time, nor-” 

“ Yes, yes ; you cannot be at the trouble. Well, now, I 
will go to Pans for you if you like (you must stand the ex¬ 
penses of the journey, that is a mere trifle). I will see the 
creditors, and talk to them, and put them off; it can all be 
arranged; you will be prepared to add something to the 
amount realized by the liquidation so as to get the bills into 
your hands.” 

“We shall s-see about that; I cannot and will not under- 

t-t-take anything unless I know-You can’t d-d-do more 

than you can, you know.” 

“ Quite so, quite so.” 

“And I am quite bewildered with all these head-splitting 
ideas that you have sp-prung upon me. Th-this is the f-f-f-first 
t-time in my 1-Uife that I have had to th-th-think about 
such th-” 

“Yes, yes, you are not a consulting barrister.” 

“I am a p-p-poor vine-grower, and I know n-n-nothing 
about what you have just t-t-t-told me; I m-m-must th-think it 
all out.” 

“Well! then,” began the president, as if he meant to 
reopen the discussion. 

“Nephew 1 ” interrupted the notary reproachfully. 

“Well, uncle?” answered the president. 

“ Let M. Grandet explain what he means to do. It is a 
very important question, and you are to receive his instructions. 
Our dear friend might now very pertinently state-” 

A knock at the door announced the arrival of the des Gras- 
sins ; their coming and exchange of greetings prevented 
Cruchot senior from finishing his sentence. Nor was he 
ill-pleased with this diversion ; Grandet was looking askance 
at him already, and there was that about the wen on the 
cooper’s face which indicated that a storm was brewing 


/ 







118 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


within. And on sober reflection it seemed to the cautious 
notary that a president of a court of first instance was not 
exactly the person to dispatch to Paris, there to open negotia¬ 
tions with creditors, and to lend himself to a more than 
dubious transaction which, however you looked at it, hardly 
squared with notions of strict honesty; and not only so, but 
he had particularly noticed that M. Grandet had shown not 
the slightest inclination to disburse anything whatever, and 
he trembled instinctively at the thought of his nephew becom¬ 
ing involved in such a business. He took advantage of the 
entrance of the des Grassins, took his nephew by the arm, 
and drew him into the embrasure of the window. 

You have gone quite as far as there is any need,” he said, 

that is quite enough of such zeal; you are overreaching 
yourself in your eagerness to marry the girl. The devil ! 
You should not rush into a thing open-mouthed, like a crow at 
a walnut. Leave the steering of the ship to me for a bit, and 
just shift your sails according to the wind. Now, is it a part 
you ought to play, compromising your dignity as magistrate in 
such a-” 

He broke off suddenly, for he heard M. des Grassins saying 
to the old cooper, as he held out his hand— 

‘'Grandet, we have heard of the dreadful misfortunes 
which have befallen your family—the ruin of the firm of 
Guillaume Grandet and your brother’s death ; we have come 
to express our sympathy and to offer you our consolation in 
this sad calamity.” 

“ There is only one misfortune,” the notary interrupted at 
this point, “ the death of the younger M. Grandet; and if 
he had thought to ask his brother for assistance, he would not 
have taken his own life. Our old friend here, who is a man 
of honor to his finger-tips, is prepared to discharge the debts 
contracted by the firm of Grandet in Paris. In order to spare 
our friend the worry of what is, after all, a piece of lawyer’s 
business, my nephew the president offers to start immediately 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 119 

for Paris, so as to arrange with the creditors, and duly satisfy 
their claims.” 

The three des Grassins were thoroughly taken aback by 
these words; Grandet appeared to acquiesce in what had been 
said, for he was pensively stroking his chin. On their way 
to the house the family had commented very freely upon 
Grandet’s niggardliness, and indeed had almost gone so far as 
to accuse him of fratricide. 

“Ahl just what I expected!” cried the banker, looking 
iX. his wife. What was I saying to you only just now as we 
came along, Mme. des Grassins ? Grandet, I said, is a man 
wlio will never swerve a hair’s-breadth from the strict course 
of honor; he will not endure the thought of the slightest 
spot on his name ! Money without honor is a disease. Oh 1 
we have a keen sense of honor in the provinces! This is 
noble—really noble of you, Grandet. I am an old soldier, 
and I do not mince matters, I say what 1 think straight out; 
and mille to7inerres / (thousand thunders) this is sublime ! ” 
Then the s-s-sub-sublime costs a great d-d-deal,” stuttered 
the cooper, as the banker shook him warmly by the hand. 

“ But this, my good Grandet (no offense to you, M. le 
President), is simply a matter of business,” des Grassins went 
on, and requires an experienced man of business to deal 
with it. There will have to be accounts kept of sales and 
outgoing expenses; you ought to have tables of interest at 
your finger-ends. I must go to Paris on business of my own, 
and I could undertake-” 

Then we must s-s-see about it, and t-t-t-try to arrange 
between us to p-p-provide for anything that m-may t-t-turn 
up, but I d-d-don’t want to be d-d drawn into anything that I 
would rather not d-d-d-do,” continued Grandet, “because, 
you see, M. le President naturally wants me to pay his 
expenses.” The good man did not stammer over these 
last words. 

“ Eh ? ” said Mme. des Grassins. Why, it is a pleasure 



120 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


to stay in Paris! For my part, I should be glad to go there 
at my own expense.” 

She made a sign to her husband, urging him to seize this 
opportunity of discomfiting their enemies and cheat them of 
their mission. Then she flung a withering glance at the now 
crestfallen and miserable Cruchots. Grandet seized the banker 
by the button-hole and drew him aside. 

“I should feel far more confidence in you than in the 
president,” he remarked; “and besides that,” he added 
(and the wen twitched a little), “ there are other fish to fry. 

I want to make an investment. I have several thousand francs 
to put into consols, and I don’t mean to pay more than eighty 
for them. Now, from all I can hear, that machine always 
runs down at the end of the month. You know all about 
these things, I expect?” 

“ Pardieu! I should think I did. Well, then, I shall 
have to buy several thousand livres worth of consols for 
you.” 

“Just by way of a beginning. But mum, I w'ant to play at 
this game without letting any one know about it. You will buy 
them for me at the end of the month, and say nothing to the 
Cruchots; it would only annoy them. Since you are going 
to Paris, we might as well see at the same time what trumps 
are for my poor nephew’s sake.” 

“ That is an understood thing. I shall travel post to Paris 
to-morrow,” said des Grassins aloud, “and I will come 
round to take your final instructions at—when shall we say ? ” 

“At five o’clock, before dinner,” said the vine-grower, 
rubbing his hands. 

The two factions for a little while remained facing each 
other. Des Grassins broke the silence again, clapping Grandet 
on the shoulder, and saying— 

“ It is a fine thing to have a good uncle like-” 

‘‘Yes, yes,” returned Grandet, falling into the stammer 
again, “ without m-making any p-p-parade about it; I am a 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 


121 


good uncle; I 1-1-loved my brother; I will give p-p-p-proof 
of it, if-if-if it d-doesn’t cost-” 

Luckily the banker interrupted him at this point. 

‘‘ We must go, Grandet. If I am to set out sooner than 
I intended, I shall have to see after some business at once 
before I go.” 

‘‘Right, quite right. I myself, in connection with you 
know what, must p-p-put on my cons-s-sidering cap, as P- 
President Cruchot s-s-says.” 

“ Plague take it ! lam no longer M. de Bonfons,” thought 
the magistrate moodily, and his face fell; he looked like a 
judge who is bored by the cause before him. 

The heads of the rival clans went out together. Both had 
completely forgotten Grandet’s treacherous crime of that 
morning; his disloyal behavior had faded from their minds. 
They sounded each other, but to no purpose, as to Grandet’s 
real intentions (if intentions he had) in this new turn that 
matters had taken. 

“Are you coming with us to Mme. Dorsonval’s?” des 
Grassins asked the notary. 

“ We are going there later on,” replied the president. 
“With my uncle’s permission, we will go first to see Mile, de 
Gribeaucourt; I promised just to look in on her to say good¬ 
night.” 

“ We shall meet again, then,” smiled Mme. des Grassins. 

But when the des Grassins were at some distance from the 
two Cruchots, Adolphe said to his father, “They are in a 
pretty stew, eh? ” 

“ Hush ! ” returned his mother, “ they can very likely hear 
what we are saying, and, besides, that remark of yours was not 
in good taste; it sounds like one of your law school phrases.” 

“ Well, uncle ! ” cried the magistrate, when he saw the des 
Grassins were out of earshot, “ I began by being President de 
Bonfons and ended as plain Cruchot.” 

E 



122 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


‘‘I saw myself that you were rather put out about it; and 
the des Grassins took the wind out of our sails. How stupid 
you are, for all your sharpness ! Let set sail, on the 
strength of a ' We shall see ’ from Grandet; be easy, my boy, 
Eugenie shall marry you for all that.” 

A few moments later and the news of Grandet’s magna¬ 
nimity was set circulating in three houses at once ; the whole 
town talked of nothing but Grandet’s devotion to his brother. 
The sale of his vintage in utter disregard of the agreement 
made among the vine-growers was forgotten ; every one fell 
to praising his scrupulous integrity and to lauding his gen¬ 
erosity, a quality which no one had suspected him of possess¬ 
ing. There is that in the French character which is readily 
excited to fury or to passionate enthusiasm by any meteor that 
appears above their horizon, that is captivated by the bravery 
of a blatant fact. Can it be that collectively men have no 
memories ? 

As soon as Grandet had bolted the house-door he called to 
Nanon: 

Don’t go to bed,” he said, and don’t unchain the dog; 
there is something to be done, and we must do it together. 
Cornoiller will be round with the carriage from Froidfond at 
eleven o’clock. You must sit up for him, and let him in 
quietly; don’t let him rap at the door, and tell him not to 
make a noise. You get into trouble with the police if you raise 
a racket at night. And, besides, there is no need to let all 
the quarter know that I am going out.” 

Having thus delivered himself, Grandet went up to his labo¬ 
ratory, and Nanon heard him stirring about, rummaging, go¬ 
ing and coming, all with great caution. Clearly he had no 
wish to waken his wife or daughter, and above all things he 
desired in nowise to excite any suspicion in the mind of his 
nephew; he had seen that a light was burning in the young 
man’s room, and had cursed his relative forthwith. 

In the middle of the night Eugenie heard a sound like the 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


123 


groan of a dying man; her cousin was always in her thoughts, 
and for her the dying man was Charles. How white and de¬ 
spairing he had looked when he wished her good-night; per¬ 
haps he had killed himself. She hastily wrapped herself in her 
capuchine, a sort of long cloak with a hood to it, and deter¬ 
mined to go to see for herself. Some rays of bright light 
streaming through the cracks of her door frightened her not a 
little at first, perhaps the house was on fire; but she was soon 
reassured. She could hear Nanon’s heavy footsteps outside, 
and the sounds of the old servant’s voice mingled with the 
neighing of several horses. 

‘‘ Can my father be taking Charles away?” she asked her¬ 
self, as she set; her door ajar, cautiously for fear the hinges 
should creak, so that she could watch all that was going on in 
the corridor. 

All at once her eyes met those of her father, and, absent 
and indifferent as they looked, a cold shudder ran through 
her. The cooper and Nanon were coming along carrying 
something which hung by a chain from a stout cudgel, one 
end of which rested on the right shoulder of either; the some¬ 
thing was a little barrel such as Grandet sometimes amused 
himself by making in the bakehouse, when he had nothing 
better to do. 

Holy Virgin! how heavy it is, sir!” said Nanon in a 
whisper. 

“ What a pity it is only full of pence ! ” replied the cooper. 

Lookout! or you will knock down the candlestick.” 

The scene was lighted by a single candle set between two 
balusters. 

Cornoiller,” said Grandet to his inpartibuSy 

“ have you your pistols with you? ” 

No, sir. Lord, love you ! What can there be to fear for 
a keg of coppers ? ” 

<‘Oh ! nothing, nothing,” said M. Grandet. 

Besides, we shall get over the ground quickly,” the keeper 


124 


EUGENIE GRANDET, 


went on ; ‘‘ your tenants have picked out their best horses for 
you.” 

‘‘Well, well. You did not let them know where I was 
going?” 

“ I did not know that myself.” 

“ Right. Is the carriage strongly built ? ” 

“That’s all right, master. Why, what is the w'eight of a 
few paltry barrels like those of yours? It would carry two or 
three thousand like them.” 

“ Well,” said Nanon, I know there’s pretty nigh eighteen 
hundredweight there^ that there is ! ” 

“Will you hold you tongue, Nanon ! You tell my wife 
that I have gone into the country, and that I shall be back to 
dinner. Hurry up, Cornoiller ; we must be in Angers before 
nine o’clock.” 

The carriage started. Nanon bolted the gateway, let the 
dog loose, and lay down and slept in spite of her bruised 
shoulder; and no one in the quarter had any suspicion of 
Grandet’s journey or of its object. The worthy man was a 
miracle of circumspection. Nobody ever saw a penny lying 
about in that house full of gold. He had learned that morn¬ 
ing from the gossip on the quay that some vessels were being 
fitted out at Nantes, and that in consequence gold was so 
scarce there that it was worth double its ordinary value, and 
speculators were buying it in Angers. The old cooper, by the 
simple device of borrowing his tenants’ horses,, was prepared 
to sell his gold at Angers, receiving in return an order upon 
the Treasury from the Receiver-General for the sum destined 
for the purchase of his consols, and an addition in the shape 
of the premium paid on his gold. 

“ My father is going out,” said Eugenie to herself. She 
had heard all that had passed from the head of the staircase. 

Silence reigned once more in the house. The rattle of the 
wheels in the streets of sleeping Saumur grew more and more 
distant, and at last died away. Then it was that a sound 




II ■ < t 










h'€ 


y\ 




J-u V-.' 




U V 


Wllwx 




Ti. 


.<; 7' . 


i ) 






*! 


T 
















».. • ’ '^rV' ■ |!^V ■?'' ^ V, «.V; - 4 

;■&■■ S 


: 


i-* V-'"V 


^ M 






t ■'^ 


■ '/•‘^ i 


I tr 


isr? 




> 








i» * 


V ^ -s 1 ‘t 


•*\- A 




vi;. 




.I'VHv 


'',i'‘-‘'i>',-H^f.;ll 




r^v. 1 


'■<• I 


/m 




.1 


■ p- 


ll- ■ 


* « 




f» . 


J'* 


yv 


!'> 


rr,. 




■« - I •' _ ^ .. iJ 


P* 


L'-. 


>> V'V " • 

ir ;t 


-s'i ' ^ 


, * »V -I - ■ . c ^ , 

^ **1 . ^ iK iv - 

[ W'r •' •■ '’■ 


K 




•. *' 


'■'i ''v ,y 




7• 1^' f ^ '■: 


\f.i 


\l 


irA;.7“ 


’• . y-t. r \ ■ 

1= : . 

H'l .‘^ ‘ 

i 

.1 


• A 




' r 


«• 




-i ,1 ,•:, *'»■ 

'*' *1 


« '„’ t 


m ^ 


• • 


^V'W ■• 


e;< 


IH 


"... ‘\i^ -? 

..,4#. 


9i 




t * 




IQ 






- •.! 


.•{ 


V'^ 


^ f 




i ^ 


9 



ifi : ja4 ' 


■ A 
















y\ 


** 


54 ?: 


t Y>' 


.\Ul 




















The door stood ajar,- she thrust it open. 


I 


i 


^ \ 




0 


\ 


<- 1 . 


J 


I 

1 • 


1 









EUGENIE GRANDE T 


125 


seemed to reach Eugenie’s heart before it fell on her ears, a 
wailing sound that rang through the thin walls above—it came 
from her cousin’s room. There was a thin line of light, 
scarcely wider than a knife edge, beneath his door; the rays 
slanted through the darkness and left a bright gleaming bar 
along the balusters of the crazy staircase. 

** He is unhappy,” she said, as she went up a little farther. 

A second moan brought her to the landing above. The 
door stood ajar ; she thrust it open. Charles was sleeping in 
the rickety old armchair, his head drooped over to one side, 
his hand hung down and nearly touched the floor, the pen that 
he had let fall lay beneath his fingers. Lying in this position, 
his breath came in quick, sharp jerks that startled Eugenie. 
She entered hastily. 

“ He must be very tired,” she said to herself, as she saw a 
dozen sealed letters lying on the table. She read the addresses 
— AfJlf. Farry, Breilman and Co ., carriage builders; M. 
Buisson, tailor; and so forth. 

Of course, he has been settling his affairs, so that he may 
leave France as soon as possible,” she thought. 

Her eyes fell upon two unsealed letters. One of them 

began—My dear Annette ”- She felt dazed, and could 

see nothing for a moment. Her heart beat fast, her feet seemed 
glued to the floor. 

His dear Annette I He loves, he is beloved !- Then 

there is no more hope !- What does he say to her? ” 

These thoughts flashed through her heart and brain. She 
read the words everywhere: on the walls, on the very floor, 
in letters of fire. 

''Must I give him up already? No, I will not read the 

letter. I ought not to stay- And yet, even if I did 

read it ? ” 

She looked at Charles, gently took his head in her hands, 
and propped it against the back of the chair. He submitted 
like a child, who even while he is sleeping knows that it 






126 


eugAnie grandet. 


is his mother who is bending over him, and, without waking, 
feels his mother’s kisses. Like a mother, Eug6nie raised the 
drooping hand, and, like a mother, laid a soft kiss on his 
hair. Dear Annetie A mocking voice shrieked the 
words in her ear. 

“ I know that perhaps I maybe doing wrong, but I will 
read that letter,” she said. 

Eugenie turned her eyes away ; her high sense of honor 
reproached her. For the first time in her life there was a 
struggle between good and evil in her soul. Hitherto she 
had never done anything for which she needed to blush. 
Love and curiosity silenced her scruples. Her heart swelled 
higher with every phrase as she read; her quickened pulses 
seemed to send a sharp, tingling glow through her veins, and 
to heighten the vivid emotions of her first love. 

dear Annette: — Nothing should have power 
to separate us save this overwhelming calamity that has be¬ 
fallen me, a calamity that no human foresight could have 
predicted. My father has died by his own hand; his for¬ 
tune and mine are both irretrievably lost. I am left an 
orphan at an age when, with the kind of education I 
have received, I am almost a child ; and, nevertheless, I 
must now endeavor to show myself a man, and to rise 
from the dark depths into which I have been hurled. I 
have been spending part of my time to-night in revolving 
plans for my future. If I am to leave France as an honest 
man, as of course I mean to do, I have not a hundred 
francs that I can call my own with which to tempt fate in 
the Indies or in America. Yes, my poor Anna, I am going 
in quest of fortune to the most deadly foreign climes. Be¬ 
neath such skies, they say, fortunes are rapidly and surely 
made. As for living on in Paris, I could not bring myself 
to do it. I could not face the coldness, the contempt, and 
the affronts that a ruined man, the son of a bankrupt, is sure 


£UGAN/£ GRAND£T. 


127 


to receive. Great heaven ! to owe two millions !- 

I should fall in a duel before a week had passed. So I 
shall not return to Paris. Your love—^the tenderest, the 
most devoted love that ever ennobled the heart of man— 
would not seek to draw me back. Alas! my darling, I 
have not money enough to take me to you, that I might give 
and receive one last kiss, a kiss that should put strength into 
me for the task that lies before me-” 

‘‘Poor Charles, I did well to read this. I have money, 
and he shall have it,” said Eugenie. She went on with the 
letter when her tears permitted her to see. 

‘‘ I have not even begun to think of the hardships of pov¬ 
erty. Supposing that I find I have the hundred louis to pay 
for my passage out, I have not a sou to lay out on a trading 
venture. Yet, no ; I shall not have a hundred louis, nor yet 
a hundred sous; I have no idea whether anything will be left 
when I have settled all my debts in Paris. If there is nothing, 
I shall simply go to Nantes and work my passage out. I will 
begin at the bottom of the ladder, like many another man of 
energy who has gone out to the Indies as a penniless youth, 
to return thence a rich man. This morning I began to look 
my future steadily in the face. It is far harder for me than 
for others; I have been the petted child of a mother who 
idolized me, indulged by the best and kindest of fathers; and 
at my very entrance into the world I met with the love of an 
Anna. As yet I have only known the primrose paths of life ; 
such happiness could not last. Yet, dear Annette, I have 
more fortitude than could be looked for from a thoughtless 
youth; above all, from a young man thus lapped round in 
happiness from the cradle, spoiled and flattered by the most 
delightful woman in Paris, the darling of fortune, whose 

wishes were as law to a father who- Oh ! my father ! He 

is dead, Annette ! Well, I have thought seriously over my 




128 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


position, and I have likewise thought over yours. I have 
grown much older in the last twenty-four hours. Dear Anna, 
even if, to keep me beside you, you were to give up all the 
luxuries that you enjoy, your box at the opera, and your toilet, 
we should not have nearly sufficient for the necessary expenses 
of the extravagant life that I am accustomed to ; and, besides, 

I could not think of allowing you to make such sacrifices for 
me. To-day, therefore, we part forever.” 

“ Then this is to take leave of her ! Holy Virgin ! what 
happiness! ” 

Eugenie started and trembled for joy. Charles stirred in 
his chair, and Eugenie felt a chill of dread. Luckily, how¬ 
ever, he did not awaken. She went on reading. 

^‘When shall I come back? I cannot tell. Europeans 
grow old before their time in those tropical countries, especi¬ 
ally Europeans who work hard. Let us look forward and 
try to see ourselves in ten years’ time. In ten years from now 
your little girl will be eighteen years old ; she will be your con¬ 
stant companion ; that is, she will be a spy upon you. If the 
world will judge you very harshly, your daughter will probably 
judge more harshly still; such ingratitude on a young girl’s 
part is common enough, and we know how the world regards 
these things. Let us take warning and be wise. Only keep 
the memory of those four years of happiness in the depths of 
your soul, as I shall keep them buried in mine; and be faith¬ 
ful, if you can, to your poor friend. I shall not be too 
exacting, dear Annette; for, as you can see, I must submit to 
my altered lot; I am compelled to look at life in a business¬ 
like way, and to base my calculations on dull, prosaic fact. 
So I ought to think of marriage as a necessary step in my new 
existence; and I will confess to you that here, in my uncle’s 
house in Saumur, there is a cousin whose manners, face, 
character, and heart you would approve; and who, moreover, 
has, it appears-” 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 


129 


“ How tired he must have been to break off like this when 
he was writing to her U' said Eugenie to herself, as the letter 
ended abruptly in the middle of a sentence. She was ready 
with excuses for him. 

How was it possible that an inexperienced girl should dis¬ 
cover the coldness and selfishness of this letter? For young 
girls, religiously brought up as she had been, are innocent and 
unsuspecting, and can see nothing but love when they have 
set foot in love’s enchanted kingdom. It is as if a light from 
heaven shone in their own souls, shedding its beams upon their 
path; their lover shines transfigured before them in reflected 
glory, radiant with fair colors from love’s magic fires, and en¬ 
dowed with noble thoughts which perhaps in truth are none 
of his. Women’s errors spring, for the most part, from a 
belief in goodness, and a confidence in truth. In Eugenie’s 
heart the words, “My dear Annette—my beloved,” echoed 
like the fairest language of love; they stirred her soul like 
organ music—like the divine notes of the Venite adoremus 
falling upon her ears in childhood. 

Surely the tears, not dry even yet upon her cousin’s eyelids, 
betokened the innate nobility of nature that never fails to 
attract a young girl. How could she know that Charles’ 
love and grief for his father, albeit genuine, was due rather to 
the fact that his father had loved him than to a deeply-rooted 
affection on his own part for his father? M. and Mine. Guil¬ 
laume Grandet had indulged their son’s every whim; every 
pleasure that wealth could bestow had been his; and thus it 
followed that he had never been tempted to make the hideous 
calculations that are only too common among the younger 
members of a family in Paris, when they see around them all 
the delights of Parisian life, and reflect with disgust that, so 
long as their parents are alive, all these enjoyments are not for 
them. The strange result of the father’s lavish kindness had 
been a strong affection on the part of his son, an affection un¬ 
alloyed by any after-thought. But, for all that, Charles was 
9 


130 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


a thorough child of Paris, with the Parisian s habit of mind; 
Annette herself had impressed upon him the importance of 
thinking out all the consequences of every step; he was not 
youthful, despite the mask of youth. 

He had received the detestable education of a world in 
which more crimes (in thought and word at least) are com¬ 
mitted in one evening than come before a court of justice in 
the course of a whole session; a world in which great ideas 
perish, done to death by a witticism, and where it is reckoned 
a weakness not to see things as they are. To see things as 
they are—that means, believe in nothing, put faifh in nothing 
and in no man, for there is no such thing as sincerity in 
opinion or affection; mistrust events, for even events at times 
have been known to be manufactured. To see things as they 
are you must weigh your friend’s purse morning by morning; 
you must know by instinct the right moment to interfere for 
your own profit in every matter that turns up; you must keep 
your judgment rigorously suspended, be in no hurry to admire 
a work of art or a noble deed, and give every one credit for 
interested motives on every possible occasion. 

After many follies, the great lady, the fair Annette, com¬ 
pelled Charles to think seriously; she talked to him of his 
future, passing a fragrant hand through his hair, and imparted 
counsel to him on the art of getting on in the world, while 
she twisted a stray curl about her fingers. She had made him 
effeminate, and now she set herself to make a materialist of 
him, a twofold work of demoralization, a corruption none the 
less deadly because it never offended against the canons of 
good society, good manners, and good taste. 

“You are a simpleton, Charles,” she would say; “I see 
that it will be no easy task to teach you the ways of the 
world. You were very naughty about M. des Lupeaulx. Oh ! 
he is not over-fastidious, I grant you, but you should wait 
until he falls from power, and then you may despise him as 
much as you like. Do you know what Mme. Campan used to 


EUGENIE GRANDET, 


131 


say to us? ‘My children, so long as a man is a Minister, 
adore him; if he falls, help to drag him to the shambles. 
He is a kind of deity so long as he is in power, but after he is 
fallen and ruined he is viler than Marat himself, for he is still 
alive, while Marat is dead and out of sight. Life is nothing 
but a series of combinations, which must be studied and fol¬ 
lowed very carefully if a good position is to be successfully 
maintained.’ ” • 

Charles had no very exalted aims; he was too much of a 
worldling; he had been too much spoiled by his father and 
mother, too much flattered by the society in which he moved, 
to be stirred by any lofty enthusiasm. In the clay of his 
nature there was a grain of gold, due to his mother’s teach¬ 
ing ; but it had been passed through the Parisian draw-plate, 
and beaten out into a thin surface gilding which must soon be 
worn away by contact with the world. 

At this time Charles, however, was only one-and-twenty, 
and it is taken for granted that freshness of heart accompanies 
the freshness of youth ; it seems so unlikely that the mind 
within should be at variance with the young face, and the 
young voice, and the candid glance. Even the hardest judge, 
the most sceptical attorney, the flintiest-hearted money-lender 
will hesitate to believe that a wizened heart and a warped and 
corrupted nature can dwell beneath a young exterior, when 
the forehead is smooth and tears come so readily to the eyes. 
Hitherto Charles had never had occasion to put his Parisian 
maxims in practice; his character had not been tried, and 
consequently had not been found wanting; but, all unknown 
to him, egoism had taken deep root in his nature. The seeds 
of this baneful political economy had been sown in his heart; 
it was only a question of time, they would spring up and 
flower so soon as the soil was stirred, as soon as he ceased to 
be an idle spectator and became an actor in the drama of real 
life. 

A young girl is nearly always ready to believe unques- 


132 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


tioningly in the promise of a fair exterior; but even if 
Eugenie had been as keenly observant and as cautious as girls 
in the provinces sometimes are, how could she have brought 
herself to mistrust her cousin, when all he did and said, and 
everything about him, seemed to be the spontaneous outcome 
of a noble nature ? This was the last outburst of real feeling, 
the last reproachful sigh of conscience in Charles’ life; fate 
had thrown them together at that moment, and, unfortunately 
for her, all her sympathies had been aroused for him. 

So she laid down the letter that seemed to her so full of 
love, and gave herself up to the pleasure of watching her 
sleeping cousin; the dreams and hopes of youth seemed to 
hover over his face, and then and there she vowed to herself 
that she would love him always. She glanced over the other 
letter; there could be no harm in reading it, she thought; 
she should only receive fresh proofs of the noble qualities 
with which, womanlike, she had invested the man whom she 
had idealized. 

‘‘My dear Alphonse,” so it began, “by the time this 
letter is in your hands I shall have no friends left; but I will 
confess that though I put no faith in the worldly-minded 
people who use the word so freely, I have no doubts of your 
friendship for me. So I am commissioning you to settle some 
matters of business. I look to you to do the best you can 
for me in this, for all I have in the world is involved in it. 
By this time you must know how I am situated. I have 
nothing, and have made up my mind to go out to the Indies. 
I have just written to all the people to whom any money is 
owing, and the enclosed list is as accurate as I can make it 
from memory. I think the sale of ray books, furniture, 
carriages, horses, and so forth ought to bring in sufficient to 
pay my debts. I only mean to keep back a few trinkets of 
little value, which will go some way towards a trading venture. 
I will send you a power of attorney in due form for this sale, 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


133 


my dear Alphonse, in case any difficulty should arise. You 
might send my guns and everything of that sort to me 
here. And you must take ‘ Briton no one would ever give 
me anything like as much as the splendid animal is worth; 
I would rather give him to you, you must regard him as the 
mourning ring which a dying man leaves in his will to his 
executor. Farry, Breilman and Co. have been building a 
very comfortable traveling carriage for me, but they have not 
sent it home yet; get them to keep it if you can, and if they 
decline to have it left on their hands, make the best arrange¬ 
ment you can for me, and do all you can to save my honor in 
the position in which I am placed. I lost six louis at play 
to that fellow from the British Isles, mind that he is-” 

Dear cousin,” murmured Eugenie, letting the sheet fall, 
and, seizing one of the lighted candles, she hastened on tiptoe 
to her own room. 

Once there, it was not without a keen feeling of pleasure 
that she opened one of the drawers in an old oak chest—a 
most beautiful specimen of the skill of the craftsmen of the 
Renaissance, you could still make out the half-effaced royal 
salamander upon it. From this drawer she took a large red 
velvet money-bag, with gold tassels, and the remains of a 
golden fringe about it, a bit of faded splendor that had belonged, 
to her grandmother. In the pride of her heart she felt its 
weight, and joyously set to work to reckon up the value of 
her little hoard, sorting out the different coins. Imprimis, 
twenty Portuguese moidores, as new and fresh as when they 
were struck in 1725, in the reign of John V.; each was nom¬ 
inally worth five lisbonines, or a hundred and sixty-five francs, 
but actually they were worth a hundred and eighty francs (so her 
father used to tell her), a fancy value on account of the rarity 
and beauty of the aforesaid coins, which shone like the sun. 
Hem, five genovines, rare Genoese coins of a hundred livres 
each, their current value was perhaps about eighty francs, but 



134 


EUG^INIE GRANDET. 


collectors would give a hundred for them. These had come 
to her from old M. de la Bertelliere. Item, three Spanish 
quadruples of the time of Philip V., bearing the date 1729. 
Mme. Gentillet had given them to her, one by one, always 
with the same little speech: There’s a little yellow bird, 
there’s a buttercup for you, worth ninety-eight livres ! Take 
great care of it, darling; it will be the flower of your flock.” 
Item (and those were the coins that her father thought most 
of, for the gold was a fraction over the twenty-three carats), a 
hundred Dutch ducats, struck at the Hague in 1756, and each 

worth about thirteen francs. Itefn, a great curiosity!-a 

few coins dear to a miser’s heart, three rupees bearing the sign 
of the Balance, and five with the sign of the Virgin stamped 
upon them, all pure gold of twenty-four carats—the magnifi¬ 
cent coins of the Great Mogul. The weight of metal in 
them alone was worth thirty-seven francs forty centimes, but 
amateurs who love to finger gold would give .fifty francs for 
such coins as those. Item, the double napoleon that had 
been given to her the day before, and which she had carelessly 
slipped into the red velvet bag. 

There were new gold-pieces fresh from the mint among her 
treasures, real works of art, which old Grandet liked to look 
at from time to time, so that he might count them over and 
•tell his daughter of their intrinsic value, expatiating also upon 
the beauty of the bordering, the sparkling field, the ornate 
lettering with its sharp, clean, flawless outlines. But now she 
gave not a thought to their beauty and rarity; her father’s 
mania and the risks she ran by despoiling herself of a hoard 
so precious in his eyes were all forgotten. She thought of 
nothing but her cousin, and managed at last to discover, after 
many mistakes in calculation, that she was the owner of eigh¬ 
teen hundred francs all told, or of nearly two thousand francs 
if the coins were sold for their actual value as curiosities. 

She clapped her hands in exultation at the sight of her 
riches, like a child who is compelled to find some outlet for 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 


135 


his overflowing glee and dances for joy. Father and daughter 
had both counted their wealth that night; he in order to sell 
his.gold, she that she might cast it abroad on the waters of 
love. She put the money back into the old purse, took it up, 
and went upstairs with it without a moment’s hesitation. Her 
cousin’s distress was the one thought in her mind ; she did not 
even remember that it was night, conventionalities were utterly 
forgotten ; her conscience did not reproach her, she was strong 
in her happiness and her love. 

As she stood upon the threshold with the candle in one hand 
and the velvet bag in the other, Charles awoke, saw his cousin, 
and was struck dumb with astonishment. Eugenie came for¬ 
ward, set the light on the table, and said with an unsteady voice : 

“ Cousin Charles, I have to ask your forgiveness for some¬ 
thing I have done ; it was very wrong, but if you will over¬ 
look it, God will forgive me.” 

What can it be ? ” asked Charles, rubbing his eyes. 

I have been reading those two letters.” 

Charles reddened. 

“ Do you ask how I came to do it ? ” she went on, ** and 
why I came up here? Indeed, I do not know now; and I 
am almost tempted to feel glad that I read the letters, for 
through reading them I have come to know your heart, your 

soul, and-” 

And what ? ” asked Charles. 

“ And your plans—the difficulty that you are in for want of 

money-” 

My dear cousin-” 

Hush ! hush ! do not speak so loud, do not let us wake 
anybody. Here are the savings of a poor girl who has no 
wants,” she went on, opening the purse. “You must take 
them, Charles. This morning I did not know what money 
was ; you have taught me that it is simply a means to an end, 
that is all. A cousin is almost a brother; surely you may 
borrow from your sister.” 







EUGENIE GKANDET. 


Eugenie, almost as much a woman as a girl, had not fore¬ 
seen a refusal, but her cousin was silent.. 

“ Why, are you going to refuse me ? ’* asked Eugenie. The 
silence was so deep that the beating of her heart was audible. 
Her pride was wounded by her cousin’s hesitation, but the 
thought of his dire need came vividly before her, and she fell 
on her knees. 

“I will not rise,” she said, “until you have taken that 

money. Oh ! cousin, say something, for pity’s sake !-so 

that I may know that you respect me, that you are generous, 
that-” 

Tins cry, wrung from her by a noble despair, brought tears 
to Charles’ eyes ; he would not let her kneel, she felt his hot 
tears on her hands, and sprang to her purse, which she emptied 
out upon the table. 

“ Well, then, it is * Yes,’ is it not ? ” she said, crying for 
joy. “ Do not scruple to take it, cousin ; you will be quite 
rich. That gold will bring you luck, you know. Some day 
you shall pay it back to me, or, if you like, we will be part¬ 
ners; I will submit to any conditions that you may impose. 
But you ought not to make so much of this gift.” 

Charles found words at last. 

“ Yes, Eugenie, I should have a little soul indeed if I would 
not take it. But nothing for nothing, confidence for con¬ 
fidence.” 

“ What do you mean? ” she asked, startled. 

“Listen, dear cousin, I have there-” 

He interrupted himself for a moment to show her a square 
box in a leather case, which stood on the chest of drawers. 

“There is something there that is dearer to me than life. 
That box was a present from my mother. Since this morning 
I have thought that if she could rise from her tomb she her¬ 
self would sell the gold that in her tenderness she lavished on 
this dressing-case, but I cannot do it—it would seem like 
sacrilege. 



EUGENIE GRANDET, 137 

Eugenie grasped her cousin’s hand tightly in hers at these 
last words. 

“ No,” he went on after a brief pause, during which they 
looked at each other with tearful eyes, “ I do not want to pull 
it to pieces, nor to risk taking it with me on my wanderings. 
1 will leave it in your keeping, dear Eugenie. Never did one 
friend confide a more sacred trust to another; but you shall 
judge for yourself.” 

He drew the box from its leather case, opened it, and dis¬ 
played before his cousin’s astonished eyes a dressing-case 
resplendent with gold—the curious skill of the craftsman had 
only added to the value of the metal. 

“All that you are admiring is nothing,” he said, pressing 
the spring of a secret drawer. “ There is something which 
is worth more than all the world to me,” he added sadly. 

He took out two portraits, two of Mme. de Mirbel’s master¬ 
pieces, handsomely set in pearls. 

“ How lovely she is! Is not this the lady to whom you 
were writing?” 

“ No,” he said, with a little smile; “ that is my mother, and 
this is my father—your aunt and uncle. Eugenie, I could 
beg and pray of you on my knees to keep this treasure safe 
for me. If I should die, and lose your little fortune, the gold 
will make good your loss; and to you alone can I leave those 
two portraits, for you alone are worthy to take charge of them, 
but do not let them pass into any other hands, rather destroy 
them-” 

Eugenie was silent. 

“Well, ‘ it is Yes, is it not?’ ” he said, and there was a 
winning charm in his manner. 

As the last words were spoken, she gave him for the first 
time such a glance as a loving woman can, a bright glance 
that reveals a depth of feeling within her. He took her hand 
and kissed it. 

“Angel of purity! what is money henceforward between 


138 


EUGtNlE GRANDET. 


us two ? It is nothing, is it not ? but the feeling, which alone 
gave it worth,'will be everything.” 

You are like your mother. Was her voice as musical as 
yours, I wonder?” 

“ Oh ! far more sweet-” 

“ Yes, for you,” she said, lowering her eyelids. ** Come, 
Charles, you must go to bed j I wish it. You are very tired. 
Good-night.” 

Her cousin had caught her hand in both of his; she drew 
it gently away, and went down to her room, her cousin light¬ 
ing the way. In the doorway of her room they both paused. 

“ Oh ! why am I a ruined man ? ” he said. 

“ Pshaw ! my father is rich, I believe,” she returned. 

“ My poor child,” said Charles, as he set one foot in her 
room, and propped himself against the wall by the doorway, 

if your father had been rich, he would not have left my father 
die, and you would not be lodged in such a poor place as 
this; he would live altogether in quite a different style.” 

“ But he has Froidfond.” 

“And what may Froidfond be worth?” 

“ I do not know ; but there is Noyers too.” 

“ Some miserable farmhouse !” 

“ He has vineyards and meadows-” 

“ They are not worth talking about,” said Charles scorn¬ 
fully. “ If your father had even twenty-four thousand livres 
a year, do you suppose that you would sleep in a bare, cold 
room like this?” he added, as he made a step forward with 
his left foot. “That is where my treasures will be,” he went 
on, nodding towards the old chest, a device by which he tried 
to conceal his thoughts from her. 

“Go,” she said, “and try to sleep,” and she barred his 
entrance into an untidy room. Charles drew back; and the 
cousins bade each other a smiling good-night. 

They fell asleep, to dream the same dream ; and from that 
time forward Charles found that there were still roses to be 




EUGENIE GRANDET. 


139 


gathered in the world in spite of his mourning. The next 
morning Mme. Grandet saw her daughter walking with Charles 
before breakfast. He was still sad and subdued; how, indeed, 
should he be otherwise than sad ? He had been brought very 
low in his distress; he was gradually finding out how deep 
the abyss was into which he had fallen, and the thought of 
the future weighed heavily upon him. 

‘‘ My father will not be back before dinner,” said Eug6nie, 
in reply to an anxious look in her mother’s eyes. 

The tones of Eugenie’s voice had grown strangely sweet; 
it was easy to see from her face and manner that the cousins 
had some thought in common. Their souls had rushed to¬ 
gether, while perhaps as yet they scarcely knew the power or 
the nature of this force which was binding them to each other. 

Charles sat in the dining-room; no one intruded upon his 
sorrow. Indeed, the three women had plenty to do. Grandet 
had gone without any warning, and his work-people were at a 
standstill. The slater came, the plumber, the bricklayer, and 
the carpenter followed; so did laborers, tenants, and vine¬ 
dressers, some came to pay their dues, and others to receive 
them, and yet others to make bargains for the repairs which 
were being done. Mme. Grandet and Eugenie, therefore, 
w’ere continually going and coming; they had to listen to 
interminable histories from laborers and country people. 

Everything that came into the house Nanon promptly and 
securely stowed away in her kitchen. She always waited for 
her master’s instructions as to what should be kept, and what 
should be sold in the market. The worthy cooper, like many 
little country squires, was wont to drink his worst wine, and 
to reserve his spoiled or wind-fallen orchard fruit for home 
consumption. 

Towards five o’clock that evening Grandet came back from 
Angers. He had made fourteen thousand francs on his gold, 
and carried a government certificate bearing interest until the 
day when it should be transferred into rentes. He had left 


140 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


Cornoiller also in Angers to look after the horses, which had 
been nearly foundered by the night journey, and had given 
instructions to bring them back leisurely after they had had a 
thorough rest. 

‘‘I have been to Angers, wife,” he said; “and I am 
hungry.” 

“Have you had nothing to eat since yesterday?” called 
Nanon from her kitchen. 

“ Nothing whatever,” said the worthy man. 

Nanon brought in the soup. Des Grassins came to take his 
client’s instructions just as the family were sitting down to 
dinner. Grandet had not so much as seen his nephew all this 
time. 

“Go on with your dinner, Grandet,” said the banker. 
“ We can have a little chat. Have you heard what gold is 
fetching in Angers, and that people from Nantes are buying it 
there? I am going to send some over.” 

“You need not trouble yourself,” answered his worthy 
client; “they have quite enough there by this time. I 
don’t like you to lose your labor when I can prevent it; we 
are too good friends for that.” 

“ But gold is at thirteen francs fifty centimes premium.” 

“ Say was at a premium.” 

How the deuce did you get to know that ? ” 

“I went over to Angers myself last night,” Grandet told 
him in a low voice. 

The banker started, and a whispered conversation followed ; 
both des Grassins and Grandet looked at Charles from time 
to time, and once more a gesture of surprise escaped the 
banker, doubtless at the point when the old cooper commis¬ 
sioned him to purchase rentes to bring in a hundred thousand 
livres. 

“ M. Grandet,” said des Grassins, addressing Charles, “I 
am going to Paris, and if there is anything I can do for 



EUGilNIE GRANDET. 


141 


‘‘Thank you, sir, there is nothing,” Charles replied. 

“You must thank him more heartily than that, nephew. 
This gentleman is going to wind up your father’s business and 
settle with his creditors.” 

“ Then is there any hope of coming to an arrangement ? ” 
asked Charles. 

“Why, are you not my nephew?” cried the cooper, with 
a fine assumption of pride. “ Our honor is involved ; is not 
your name Grandet? ” 

Charles rose from his chair, impulsively flung his arms about 
his uncle, turned pale, and left the room. Eugenie looked at 
her father with affection and pride in her eyes. 

“Well, let us say good-bye, my good friend,” said 
Grandet. “ I am very much at your service. Try to get 
round those fellows over yonder.” 

The two diplomatists shook hands, and the cooper went to 
the door with his neighbor; he came back to the room again 
when he had closed the door on des Grassins, flung himself 
down in his easy-chair, and said to Nanon ; “ Bring me some 
cordial.” 

But he was too much excited to keep still; he rose and 
looked at old M. de la Bertelliere’s portrait, and began to 
“dance a jig,” in Nanon’s phrase, singing to himself— 

“ Once in the Gardes frattfaises 
I had a grandpapa-” 

Nanon, Mme. Grandet, and Eugenie all looked at each 
other in silent dismay. The vine-grower’s ecstasies never 
boded any good. 

The evening was soon over. Old Grandet went off early 
to bed, and no one was allowed to stay up after that; when 
he slept, everyone else must likewise sleep, much as in Poland, 
in the days of Augustus the Strong, whenever the king drank 
all his subjects were loyally tipsy. Wherefore, Nanon, 
Charles, and Eugenie were no less tired than the master of 


142 


EUGENIE GRANDE T. 


the house; and as for Mme. Grandet, she slept or woke, ate 
or drank, as her husband bade her. Yet during the two 
hours allotted to the digestion of his dinner the cooper was 
more facetious than he had ever been in his life before, and 
uttered not a few of his favorite aphorisms; one example will 
serve to plumb the depths of the cooper’s mind. When he 
had finished his cordial, he looked pensively at the glass, and 
thus delivered himself— 

“You have no sooner set your lips to a glass than it is 
empty ! Such is life. You cannot have your cake and eat it 
too, and you can’t turn over your money and keep it in your 
purse ; if you could only do that, life would be too glorious.” 

He was not only jocose, he was good-natured, so that when 
Nanon came in with her spinning-wheel—“You must be 
tired,” he said ; “let the hemp alone.” 

“ And if I did,” the servant answered,” why, I should have 
to sit with my hands before me.” 

“ Poor Nanon ! would you like some cordial?” 

“ Cordial ? Oh ! I don’t say no. Madame makes it much 
better than the apothecaries do. The stuff they sell is like 
physic.” 

“They spoil the flavor with putting too much sugar in it,” 
said the good man. 

The next morning, at the eight o’clock breakfast, the party 
seemed, for the first time, almost like one family. Mme. 
Grandet, Eugenie, and Charles had been drawn together by 
these troubles, and Nanon herself unconsciously felt with 
them. As for the old vine-grower, he scarcely noticed his 
nephew’s presence in the house, his greed for gold had been 
satisfied, and he was very shortly to be quit of this young 
sprig by the cheap and easy expedient of paying his nephew’s 
traveling expenses as far as Nantes. 

Charles and Eugenie meanwhile were free to do what seemed 
to them good. They were under Mme. Grandet’s eyes, and 


eug^:nie grandet. 


143 


Grandet reposed complete faith in his wife in all matters of 
conduct and religion. Moreover, he had other things to 
think of; his meadows were to be drained, and a row of 
poplars was to be planted along the Loire, and there was all 
the ordinary winter work at Froidfond and elsewhere ; in fact, 
he was exceedingly busy. 

And now began the springtime of love for Eugenie. 
Since that hour in the night when she had given her gold to her 
cousin, her heart had followed the gift. They shared a secret 
between them; they were conscious of this understanding 
whenever they looked at each other ; and this knowledge, that 
brought them more and more closely together, drew them in a 
manner out of the current of every-day life. And did not 
relationship justify a certain tenderness in the voice and 
kindness in the eyes? Eugenie therefore quietly set herself 
to work to make her cousin forget his grief in the childish joys 
of growing love. 

For the beginnings of love and the beginnings of life are not 
unlike. Is not the child soothed by smiles and cradle-songs, 
and fairy tales of a golden future that lies before him? 
Above him, too, the bright wings of hope are always spread, 
and does he not shed tears of joy or of sorrow, wax petulant 
over trifles and quarrelsome over the pebbles with which he 
builds a tottering palace, or the flowers that are no sooner 
gathered than forgotten ? Is he not also eager to outstrip 
time, and to live in the future ? Love is the soul’s second 
transformation. 

Love and childhood were almost the same thing for Charles 
and Eugdnie; the dawn of love and its childish beginnings 
were all the sweeter because their hearts were full of gloom; 
and this love, that from its birth had been enveloped in crape, 
was in keeping with their homely surroundings in the melan¬ 
choly old house. As the cousins interchanged a few words 
by the well in the silent courtyard, or sat out in the little 
garden towards sunset time, w'holly absorbed by the moment- 


144 eug£:nie grandet, 

ous nothings that each said to each, or wrapped in the 
stillness that always brooded over the space between the 
ramparts and the house, Charles learned to think of love as 
something sacred. Hitherto, with his great lady, his “dear 
Annette,” he had experienced little but its perils and storms; 
but that episode in Paris was over, with its coquetry and 
passion, its vanity and emptiness, and he turned to this love 
in its purity and truth. 

He came to feel a certain fondness for the old house, and 
their way of life no longer seemed absurd to him. He would 
come downstairs early in the morning so as to snatch a few 
words with Eugenie before her father gave out the stores; 
and when the sound of Grandet’s heavy footstep echoed on 
the staircase, he fled into the garden. Even Eugenie’s mother 
did not know of this morning tryst of theirs, and Nanoii 
made as though she did not see it; it was a small piece 
of audacity that gave the keen relish of a stolen pleasure to 
their innocent love. Then when breakfast was over, and 
the elder Grandet had gone to see after his business and 
his improvements, Charles sat in the gray parlor between 
the mother and daughter, finding a pleasure unknown be¬ 
fore in holding skeins of thread for them to wind, in listening 
to their talk, and watching them sew. There was something 
that appealed to him strongly in the almost monastic sim¬ 
plicity of the life, which had led him to discover the nobleness 
of the natures of these two unworldly women. He had not 
believed that such lives as these were possible in France; in 
Germany he admitted that old-world manners lingered still, 
but in France they were only to be found in fiction and in 
Auguste Lafontaine’s novels. It was not long before Eu¬ 
genie became an embodiment of his ideal, Goethe’s Mar¬ 
guerite without her error. 

Day after day, in short, the poor girl hung on his words 
and looks, and drifted farther along the stream of love. He 
snatched at every happiness as some swimmer might catch at 


EUGENIE GRANDET 


145 


an overhanging willow branch, that so he might reach the 
bank and rest there fora little while. 

Was not the time of parting very near now ? The shadow 
of that parting seemed to fall across the brightest hours of 
those days that fled so fast; and not one of them went by 
but something happened to remind her how soon it would be 
upon them. 

For instance, three days after des Grassins had started for 
Paris, Grandet had taken Charles before a magistrate with the 
funereal solemnity with which such acts are performed by 
provincials, and in the presence of that functionary the young 
man had had to sign a declaration that he renounced all claim 
to his father’s property. Dreadful repudiation ! An impiety 
amounting to apostasy ! He went to M. Cruchot to procure 
two powers of attorney, one for des Grassins, the other for the 
friend who was commissioned to sell his own personal effects. 
There were also some necessary formalities in connection with 
his passport; and finally, on the arrival of the plain suit of 
mourning which Charles had ordered from Paris, he sent for 
a clothier in Saumur, and disposed of his now useless ward¬ 
robe. This transaction was peculiarly pleasing to old Grandet. 

Ah ! Now you look like a man who is ready to set out, 
and means to make his way in the world,” he said, as he saw 
his nephew in a plain, black overcoat of rough cloth. “ Good, 
very good ! ” 

I beg you to believe, sir,” Charles replied, “ that I shall 
face my position with proper spirit.” 

What does this mean ? ” asked his worthy relative ; there 
was an eager look in the good man’s eyes at the sight of a 
handful of gold which Charles held out to him. 

“I have gathered together my studs and rings and every¬ 
thing of any value that I have; I am not likely to want them 
now; but ’ I know of nobody in Saumur, and this morning I 
thought I would ask you- 

To buy it ? ” Grandet broke in upon him. 

10 



146 


eugAnie grande T. 


“No, uncle, to give me the name of some honest man 
who-” 

“ Give it to me, nephew; I will take it up stairs and find 
out what it is worth, and let you know the value to a 
centime. Jeweler’s gold,” he commented, after an examina¬ 
tion of a long chain, “ jeweler’s gold, eighteen to nineteen 
carats, I should say.” 

The worthy soul held out his huge hand for it, and carried 
off the whole collection. 

“ Cousin Eugenie,” said Charles, “permit me to offer you 
these two clasps; you might use them to fasten ribbons round 
your wrists, that sort of bracelet is all the rage just now.” 

“I do not hesitate to take it; cousin,” she said, with a 
look of intelligence. 

“And, aunt, this is my mother’s thimble; I have treasured 
it up till now in my dressing-case,” and he gave a pretty gold 
thimble to Mme. Grandet, who for the past ten years had 
longed for one. 

“It is impossible to thank you in words, dear nephew,” 
said the old mother, as her eyes filled with tears. “ But 
morning and evening I shall repeat the prayer for travelers, 
and pray most fervently for you. If anything should happen 
to me, Eugenie shall take care of it for you.” 

“ It is worth nine hundred and eighty-nine francs seventy- 
five centimes, nephew,” said Grandet, as he came in at the 
door. “ But to save you the trouble of selling it, I will let 
you have the money in livres.” 

This expression “in livres” means, in the districts along 
the Loire, that a crown of six livres is to be considered worth 
six francs, without deduction. 

“I did not venture to suggest such a thing,” Charles 
answered, “but I shrank from hawking my trinkets about in 
the town where you are living. Dirty linen ought not to be 
washed in public, as Napoleon used to say. Thank you for 
obliging me.” 


EUGANIE GRANDET. 147 

Grandet scratched his ear, and there was a moment’s 
silence in the room. 

And, dear uncle,” Charles went on, somewhat nervously, 
and as though he feared to wound his uncle’s susceptibilities, 
** my cousin and aunt have consented to receive trifling 
mementoes from me; will you not in your turn accept these 
sleeve-links, which are useless to me now; they may perhaps 
recall to your memory a poor boy, in a far-off country, whose 
thoughts will certainly often turn to those who are all that 
remain to him now of his family.” 

Oh ! my boy, my boy, you must not strip yourself like 
that for us-’ ’ 

‘‘What have you there, wife?” said the cooper, turning 
eagerly towards her. “Ah! a gold thimble? And you, 
little girl ? Diamond clasps ; what next I Come, I will 
accept your studs, my boy,” he continued, squeezing Charles’ 

hand. “ But-you must let me pay-your-yes, your 

passage out to the Indies. Yes, I mean to pay your passage. 
Besides, my boy, when I estimated your jewelry I only took 
it at its value as metal, you see, without reckoning the work¬ 
manship, and it may be worth a trifle more on that account. 

So that is settled. I will pay you fifteen hundred francs- 

in livres; Cruchot will lend it me, for I have not a brass 
farthing in the house; unless Perrotet, who is getting behind¬ 
hand with his dues, will pay me in coin. There I there I I 
will go and see about it,” and he took up his hat, put on his 
gloves, and went forthwith. 

“Then you are going? ” said Eugenie, with sad, admiring 
eyes. 

“ I cannot help myself,” he answered, with his head bent 
down. 

For several days Charles looked, spoke, and behaved like a 
man who is in deep trouble, but who feels the weight of such 
heavy obligations, that his misfortunes only brace him for 
greater effort. He had ceased to pity himself; he had become 







148 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


a man. Never had Eugenie augured better of her cousin’s 
character than she did on the day when she watched him 
come downstairs in his plain, black mourning suit, which set 
off his pale, sad face to such advantage. The two women 
had also gone into mourning, and went with Charles to the 
requiem mass celebrated in the parish church for the soul of the 
late Guillaume Grandet. 

Charles received letters from Paris as they took the mid¬ 
day meal; he opened and read them. 

“Well, cousin,” said Eugenie, in a low voice, “are your 
affairs going on satisfactorily ? ” 

“ Never put questions of that sort, my girl,” remarked 
Grandet. “ I never talk to you about my affairs, and why 
the devil should you meddle in your cousin’s? Just let the 
boy alone.” 

“ Oh ! my dear uncle, I have no secrets of any sort,” said 
Charles. 

“Tut, tut, tut. You will find out that you must bridle 
your tongue in business, nephew.” 

When the two lovers were alone in the garden, Charles 
drew Eugdnie to the old bench under the walnut tree where 
they so often sat of late. 

“I felt sure of Alphonse, and I was right,” he said ; “he 
has done wonders, and has settled my affairs prudently and 
loyally. All my debts in Paris are paid, my furniture sold 
well, and he tells me that he has acted on the advice of an 
old sea captain who had made the voyage to the Indies, and has 
invested the surplus money in ornaments and odds and ends 
for which there is a great demand out there. Pie has sent ray 
packages to Nantes, where an East Indiaman is taking freight 
for Java, and so, Eugenie, in five days we must bid each other 
farewell, for a long while at any rate, and perhaps forever. 
My trading venture and the ten thousand francs which two of 
my friends have sent me are a very poor start; I cannot 
expect to return for many years. Dear cousin, let us not con- 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


149 


sider ourselves bound in any way; I may die, and very likely 
some good opportunity for settling yourself-” 

‘‘You love me ? ” she asked. 

“Oh! yes, indeed,” he replied, with an earnestness of 
manner that betokened a like earnestness in his feelings. 

“Then I will wait for you, Charles. Dieu ! my father is 
looking out of his window,” she exclaimed, evading her 
cousin, who had drawn closer to embrace her. 

She fled to the archway; and seeing that Charles followed 
her thither, she retreated farther, flung back the folding door 
at the foot of the staircase, and with no very clear idea, save 
that of flight, she rushed towards the darkest corner of the 
passage, outside Nanon’s sleeping hole ; and there Charles, 
who was close beside her, grasped both hands in his and 
pressed her to his heart; his arms went round her waist, 
Eugenie resisted no longer, and leaning against her lover she 
received and gave the purest, sweetest, and most perfect of all 
kisses. 

“ Dear Eugenie, a cousin is better than a brother; he can 
marry you,” said Charles. 

“ Amen, so be it! ” cried Nanon, opening the door behind 
them, and emerging from her den. Her voice startled the 
two lovers, who fled into the dining-room, where Eugenie 
took up her sewing, and Charles seized on Mme. Grandet’s 
prayer book, opened it at the litanies of the Virgin, and began 
to read industriously. 

“ Why! ” said Nanon, “ so we are all saying our prayers ! ” 

As soon as Charles fixed the day for his departure, Grandet 
bustled about and affected to take the greatest interest in the 
whole matter. He was liberal with advice, and with anything 
else that cost him nothing, first seeking out a packer for 
Charles, and then, saying tliat the man wanted too much for 
his cases, setting to work with all his might to make them 
himself, using odd planks for the purpose. He was up be- 



150 


EUGiiNIE GRANDE T, 


times every morning planing, fitting, nailing deal boards 
together, squaring and shaping; and, in fact, he made some 
strong cases, packed all Charles’ property in them, and under¬ 
took to send them by steamer down the Loire to Nantes in 
time to go by the merchant ship, and to insure them during 
the voyage. 

Since that kiss given and taken in the passage, the hours 
sped with terrible rapidity for Eugenie. At times she thought 
of following her cousin j for of all ties that bind one human be¬ 
ing to another, this passion of love is the closest and strongest, 
and those who know this, and know how every day shortens 
love’s allotted span, and how not time alone but age and 
mortal sickness and all the untoward accidents of life combine 
to menace it—these will know the agony that Eugenie suf¬ 
fered. She shed many tears as she walked up and down the 
little garden ; it had grown so narrow for her now; the court¬ 
yard, the old house, and the town had all grown narrow, 
and her thoughts fared forth already across vast spaces of 
sea. 

It was the day before the day of departure. That morning, 
while Grandet and Nanon were out of the house, the precious 
casket that held the two portraits was solemnly deposited in 
Eugenie’s chest, beside the now empty velvet bag in the only 
drawer that could be locked, an installation which was not 
affected without many tears and kisses. When Eugenie locked 
the drawer and hid the key in her bosom, she had not the 
courage to forbid the kiss by which Charles sealed the act. 

“The key shall always stay there, dear.” 

“ Ah ! well, my heart will always be there with it too.” 

“Oh ! Charles, you should not say that,” she said a little 
reproachfully. 

“ Are we not married ? ” he replied. “ I have your word ; 
take mine.” 

“Thine forever!” they said together, and repeated it a 
second time. No holier vow was ever made on earth ; for 


eugAnie grandet. 


151 


Charles’ love had received a moment’s consecration in the 
presence of Eugenie’s simple sincerity. 

It was a melancholy group round the breakfast-table next 
morning. Even Nanon herself, in spite of Charles’ gift of a 
new gown and a gilt cross, had a tear in her eye ; but she was 
free to express her feelings, and did so. 

Oh ! that poor, delicate young gentleman who is going to 
sea,” was the burden of her'discourse. 

At half-past ten the whole family left the house to see Charles 
start for Nantes in the diligence. Nanon had let the dog 
loose and locked the door, and meant to carry Charles’ hand¬ 
bag. Every shopkeeper in the ancient street was in the door¬ 
way to watch the little procession pass. M. Cruchot joined 
them in the market-place. 

Eugdnie,” whispered her mother, “ mind you do not cry! ” 
They reached the gateway of the inn, and there Grandet 
kissed Charles on both cheeks. Well ! nephew,” he said, 
set out poor and come back rich ; you leave your father’s 
honor in safe-keeping. I—Grandet—will answer to you for 

that; you will only have to do your part-” 

“ Oh ! uncle, this sweetens the bitterness of parting. Is 
not this the greatest gift you could possibly give me ? ” 

Charles had broken in upon the old cooper’s remarks before 
he quite understood their drift; he put his arms round his 
uncle’s neck, and let fall tears of gratitude on the vine-grower’s 
sunburned cheeks ; Eugenie clasped her cousin’s hand in one 
of hers and her father’s in the other, and held them tightly. 
Only the notary smiled to himself; he alone understood the 
worthy man, and he could not help admiring his astute cun¬ 
ning. The four Saumurois and a little group of onlookers hung 
about the diligence till the last moment; and looked after it 
until it disappeared across the bridge, and the sound of the 
wheels grew faint and distant. 

A good riddance ! ” said the cooper. 

Luckily, no one but M. Cruchot heard this ejaculation; 


152 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


Eugenie and her mother had walked along the quay to a point 
of view whence they could still see the diligence, and stood 
there waving their handkerchiefs and watching Charles’ 
answering signal till he was out of sight; then Eugenie 
turned. 

“ Oh ! mother, mother, if I had God’s power for one 
moment,” she said. 

To save farther interruption to the course of the story, it is 
necessary to glance a little ahead, and give a brief account 
of the course of events in Paris, of Grandet’s calculations, 
and the action taken by his worthy lieutenant the banker in 
the matter of Guillaume Grandet’s affairs. A month after 
des Grassins had gone, Grandet received a certificate for a 
hundred thousand livres per annum of rentes^ purchased at 
eighty francs. No information was ever forthcoming as to 
how and when the actual coin had been paid, or the receipt 
taken, which in due course had been exchanged for the certi¬ 
ficate. The inventory and statement of his affairs which the 
miser left at his death threw no light upon the mystery, and 
Cruchot fancied that in some way or other Nanon must have 
been the unconscious instrument employed; for about that 
time the faithful serving-maid was away from home for four or 
five days, ostensibly to see after matters at Froidfond, as if its 
worthy owner were likely to forget anything there that re¬ 
quired looking after ! As for Guillaume Grandet’s creditors, 
everything had happened as the cooper had intended and 
foreseen. 

At the Bank of France (as everybody knows) they keep 
accurate lists of all the great fortunes in Paris or in the 
departments. The names of des Grassins and of Felix 
Grandet of Saumur were duly to be found inscribed therein ; 
indeed, they shone conspicuous there as well-known names 
in the business world, as men who were not only financially 
sound, but owners of broad acres unencumbered by mortgages. 
And now it was said that des Grassins of Saumur had come to 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


153 


Paris with intent to call a meeting of the creditors of the 
firm of Guillaume Grandet; the shade of the wine merchant 
was to be spared the disgrace of protested bills. The seals 
were broken in the presence of the creditors, and the family- 
notary proceeded to make out an inventory in due form. 

Before very long, in fact, des Grassins called a meeting of 
the creditors, who with one voice appointed the banker of 
Saumur as trustee conjointly with Francois Keller, the head 
of a large business house, and one of the principal creditors, 
empowering them to take such measures as they thought fit, in 
order to save the family name (and the bills) from being dis¬ 
honored. The fact that des Grassins was acting as his agent 
produced a hopeful tone in the meeting, and things went 
smoothly from the first; the banker did not find a single dis¬ 
sentient voice. No one thought of passing his bill to his 
profit and loss account, and each one said to himself— 
Grandet of Saumur is going to pay ! ” 

Six months went by. The Parisian merchants had with¬ 
drawn the bills from circulation, and had consigned them to 
the depths of their portfolios. The cooper had gained his 
first point. Nine months after the first meeting the two 
trustees paid the creditors a dividend of forty-seven per cent. 
This sum had been raised by the sale of the late Guillaume 
Grandet’s property, goods, chattels and general effects; the 
most scrupulous integrity characterized these proceedings; 
indeed, the whole affair was conducted with the most con¬ 
scientious honesty, and the delighted creditors fell to admiring 
Grandet’s wonderful, indubitable, and high-minded probity. 
When these praises had duly circulated for a sufficient length 
of time, the creditors began to ask themselves when the 
remainder of their money would be forthcoming, and bethought 
them of collectively writing a letter to Grandet. 

“Here we are! ” was the old cooper’s comment, as be 
flung the letter in the fire. Patience, patience, my dear 
friends.” 

F 


154 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


By w3.y of 3. reply to the propositions conts-ined. in the letter, 
Grandet of Saumur required them to deposit with a notary 
all the bills and claims against the estate of his deceased 
brother, accompanying each with receipts for the payments 
already made. The accounts were to be audited, and the 
exact condition of affairs was to be ascertained. Innumer¬ 
able difficulties were cleared away by this notion of the de¬ 
posit. 

A creditor, generally speaking, is a sort of maniac j there 
is no saying what a creditor will do. One day he is in a 
hurry to bring the thing to an end, the next he is all for fire 
and sword, a little later and he is sweetness and benignity 
itself. To-day, very probably, his wife is in a good humor, 
his youngest hope has just cut a tooth, everything is going 
on comfortably at home, he has no mind to abate his claims 
one jot; but to-morrow comes and it rains, and he cannot go 
out; he feels low in his mind, and agrees hastily to anything 
and everything that is likely to settle the affair; the next morn¬ 
ing brings counsel; he requires a guarantee, and by the end of 
the month he talks about an execution, the inhuman, blood¬ 
thirsty wretch ! The creditor is not unlike that common or 
house sparrow on whose tail small children are encouraged to 
try to put a grain of salt—a pleasing simile which a creditor 
may twist to his own uses, and apply to his bills, from which 
he fondly hopes to derive some benefit at last. Grandet had 
observed these atmospheric variations among creditors; and 
his forecasts in the present case were correct, his brother’s 
creditors were behaving in every respect exactly as he wished. 
Some waxed wroth, and flatly declined to have anything to do 
with the deposit, or to give up the vouchers. 

“ Good ! ” said Grandet; “ that is all right! ” He rubbed 
his hands as he read the letters which des Grassins wrote to 
him on the subject. 

Yet others refused to consent to the aforesaid deposit unless 
their position was clearly defined in the first place; it was to 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


155 


be made without prejudice, and they reserved the right to 
declare the estate bankrupt should they deem it advisable. 
This opened a fresh correspondence, and occasioned a farther 
delay, after which Grandet finally agreed to all the conditions, 
and as a consequence the more tractable creditors brought 
the recalcitrant to hear reason, and the deposit was made, not, 
however, without some grumbling. 

“That old fellow is laughing in his sleeve at you and us 
too,” said they to des Grassins. 

Twenty-three months after Guillaume Grandet’s death, many 
of the merchants had forgotten all about their claims in the 
course of events in a business life in Paris, or they only 
thought of them to say to themselves— 

“ It begins to look as though the forty-seven per cent, is 
about all I shall get out of that business.” 

The cooper had reckoned on the aid of time, who, as he 
was wont to say, is a good fellow. By the end of the third 
year des Grassins wrote to Grandet saying that he had in¬ 
duced most of the creditors to give up their bills, and that the 
amount now owing was only about ten per cent, of the out¬ 
standing two million four hundred thousand francs. Grandet 
replied that there yet remained the notary and the stockbroker, 
whose failures had been the death of his brother ; they were 
still alive. They might be solvent again by this time, and 
proceedings ought to be taken against them ; something might 
be recovered in this way which would still farther reduce the 
sum-total of the deficit. 

When the fourth year drew to a close the deficit had been 
duly brought down to the sum of twelve hundred thousand 
francs ; the limit appeared to have been reached. Six months 
farther were spent in parleyings between the trustees and the 
creditors, and between Grandet and the trustees. In short, 
strong pressure being brought to bear upon Grandet of Saumur, 
he announced, somewhere about the ninth month of the same 
year, that his nephew, who had made a fortune in the East 


156 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


Indies, had signified his intention of settling in full all claims on 
his father’s estate; and that meantime he could not take it upon 
himself to act, nor to defraud the creditors by winding up the 
affair before he had consulted his nephew; he added that he 
had written to him, and was now awaiting an answer. 

The middle of the fifth year had been reached, and still 
the creditors were held in check by the magic words in fully 
let fall judiciously from time to time by the sublime cooper, 
who was laughing at them in his sleeve ; “ those Parisians,” 
he would say to himself, with a mild oath, and a cunning 
smile would steal across his features. 

In fact, a martyrdom unknown to the calendars of com¬ 
merce was in store for the creditors. When next they 
appear in the course of this story, they will be found in 
exactly the same position that they were in now when 
Grandet had done with them. Consols went up to a hundred 
and fifteen, old Grandet sold out, and received from Paris 
about two million four hundred thousand francs in gold, 
which went into his wooden kegs to keep company with the 
six hundred thousand francs of interest which his investment 
had brought in. 

Des Grassins stayed on in Paris, and for the following 
reasons. In the first place, he had been appointed a deputy; 
and in the second, he, the father of a family, bored by the 
exceeding dulness of existence in Saumur, was smitten with the 
charms of Mile. Florine, one of the prettiest actresses of the 
Theatre de Madame, and there was a recrudescence of the 
quartermaster in the banker. It is useless to discuss his con¬ 
duct ; at Saumur it was pronounced to be profoundly immoral. 
It was very lucky for his wife that she had brains enough to 
carry on the concern at Saumur in her own name, and could 
extricate the remains of her fortune, which had suffered not a 
little from M. des Grassins’ extravagance and folly. But the 
quasi-widow was in a false position, and the Cruchotins did 
that in th^m lay to make.matters worse; she had to give 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 


157 


up all hope of a match between her son and Eugenie Grandet, 
and married her daughter very badly. Adolphe des Grassins 
went to join his father in Paris, and there acquired, so it was 
said, an unenviable reputation. The triumph of the Cruchotins 
was complete. 

*‘Your husband has taken leave of his senses,” Grandet 
took occasion to remark as he accommodated Mine, des 
Grassins with a loan (on good security). “ I am very sorry 
for you ; you are a nice little woman.” 

‘‘Ah! ” sighed the poor lady, “who could have believed 
that day when he set out for Paris to see after that business of 
yours that he was hurrying to his own ruin ? ” 

“ Heaven is my witness, madame, that to the very last I did 
all I could to prevent him, and M. le President was dying 
to go; but we know now why your husband was so set 
upon it.” 

Clearly, therefore, Grandet lay under no obligation to des 
Grassins. 

In every situation a woman is bound to suffer in many 
ways that a man does not, and to feel her troubles more 
acutely than he can ; for a man’s vigor and energy are con¬ 
stantly brought into play; he acts and thinks, comes and 
goes, busies himself in the present, and looks to the future 
for consolation. This was what Charles was doing. But a 
woman cannot help herself—hers is a passive part; she is 
left face to face with her trouble, and has nothing to divert 
her mind from it; she sounds the depths of the abyss of 
sorrow, and its dark places are filled with her prayers and 
tears. So it was with Eugenie. She was beginning to under¬ 
stand that the web of a woman’s life will always be woven 
of love and sorrow and hope and fear and self-sacrifice; 
hers was to be a woman’s lot in all things without a 
woman’s consolations, and her moments of happiness (to 
make use of Bossuet’s wonderful illustration) were to be like 


158 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


the scattered nails driven into the wall, when all collected 
together they scarcely filled the hollow of the hand. Troubles 
seldom keep us waiting for them, and for Eugenie they 
were gathering thick and fast. 

The day after Charles had gone, the Grandet household fell 
back into the old ways of life; there was no difference for any 
one but Eugenie—for her the house had grown very empty all 
of a sudden. Charles’ room should remain just as he had left 
it \ Mme. Grandet and Nanon lent themselves to this whim 
of hers, willingly maintained the siatu quo, and said nothing 
to her father. 

“Who knows?” Eugenie said. “He may come back to 
us sooner than we think.” 

“ Ah ! I wish I could see him here again,” replied Nanon. 
“ I could get on with him well enough ! He was very nice, 
and an excellent gentleman ; and he was pretty-like, his hair 
curled over his head just like a girl’s.” 

Eugenie gazed at Nanon. 

“ Holy Virgin ! mademoiselle, with such eyes, you are like 
to lose your soul. You shouldn’t look at people in that way.” 

From that day Mile, Grandet’s beauty took a new character. 
The grave thoughts of love that slowly enveloped her soul, the 
dignity of a woman who is beloved, gave to her face the sort 
of radiance that early painters expressed by the aureole. Be¬ 
fore her cousin came into her life, Eugenie might have been 
compared to the Virgin as yet unconscious of her destiny; 
and now that he had passed out of it, she seemed like the Vir¬ 
gin Mother; she, too, bore love in her heart. Spanish art 
has depicted these two Marys, so different one from the other 
—Christianity, with its many^mbols, knows no more glorious 
types than these. 

The day after Charles had left them, Eugenie went to mass 
(as she had resolved to do daily), and on her way back bought 
a map of the world from the only bookseller in tl'k town. This 
she pinned to the wall beside her glass, so that she might fol- 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


159 


low the course of her cousin’s voyage to the Indies; and night 
and morning might be beside him for a little while on that 
far-off vessel, and see him and ask all the endless questions she 
longed to ask. 

“ Are you well ? Are you not sad ? Am I in your thoughts 
when you see the star that you told me about ? You made me 
see how beautiful it was.” 

In the morning she used to sit like one in a dream under 
the great walnut tree, on the old gray, lichen-covered, worm- 
eaten bench wliere they had talked so kindly and so foolishly, 
where they had built such fair castles in the air in which to 
live. She thought of the future as she watched the little strip 
of sky shut in by the high walls on every side, then her eyes 
wandered over the old buttressed wall and the roof—Charles’ 
room lay beneath it. In short, this solitary persistent love 
mingling with all her thoughts became the substance, or, as 
our forefathers would have said, the staff” of her life. 

If Grandet’s self-styled friends came in of an evening, she 
would seem to be in high spirits, but the liveliness was only 
assumed ; she used to talk about Charles with her mother and 
Nanon the whole morning through, and Nanon—who was of 
the opinion that without faltering in her duty to her master 
she might yet feel for her young mistress’ troubles—Nanon 
spoke on this wise— 

If I had had a sweetheart, I would have-1 would have 

gone with him to hell. I would have-well, then, I would 

just have laid down my life for him, but-no such cliance ! 

I shall die without knowing what it is to love. Would you 
believe it, mamselle, there is that old Cornoiller, who is a 
good man all the same, dangling about after my savings, just 
like the others who come here paying court to you and sniffing 
after the master’s money. I see through it; I may be as big 
as a haystack, but I am as sharp as a needle yet. Well! and 
yet do you know, mamselle, it may not be love, but I rather 
like it.” 



160 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


In this way two months went by. The secret that bound 
the three women so closely together had brought a new 
interest into the household life hitherto so monotonous. For 
them Charles still dwelt in the house, and came and went be¬ 
neath the old gray rafters of the parlor. Every morning and 
evening Eugenie opened the dressing-case and looked at her 
aunt’s portrait. Her mother, suddenly coming into her room 
one Sunday morning, found her absorbed in tracing out a 
likeness to Charles in the lady of the miniature, and Mme. 
Grandet learned for the first time a terrible secret, liow that 
Eugenie had parted with her treasures and had taken the case 
in exchange. 

“You have let him have it all! ” cried the terrified mother. 
“What will you say to your father on New Year’s Day when 
he asks to see your gold ? ” 

Eugenie’s eyes were set in a fixed stare; the horror of this 
thought so filled the women that half the morning went by, 
and they were distressed to find themselves too late for high 
mass, and were only in time for the military mass. The year 
1819 was almost over; there were only three more days left. 
In three days a terrible drama would begin, a drama undigni¬ 
fied by poison, dagger, or bloodshed, but fate dealt scarcely 
more cruelly with the princely house of Atreus than with the 
actors in this bourgeois tragedy. 

“What is to become of us?” said Mme. Grandet, laying 
down her knitting on her knee. 

Poor mother! all the events of the past two months had 
sadly hindered the knitting, the woolen cuffs for winter wear 
were not’ finished yet, a homely and apparently insignificant 
fact which was to work trouble enough for her. For want of 
the warm cuffs she caught a chill after a violent perspiration 
brought on by one of her husband’s fearful outbursts of rage. 

“ My poor child, I have been thinking that if you had only 
told me about this, we should have had time to write to M. 
des Grassins in Paris. He might have managed to send us 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


161 


some gold-pieces like those of yours; and although Grandet 
knows the look of them so well, still perhaps-” 

But where could we have found so much money?” 

I would have raised it on my property. Besides, M. des 

Grassins would have befriended us-” 

“There is not time enough now,” faltered Eugenie in a 
smothered voice. “ To-morrow morning we shall have to go 
to his room to wish him a happy New Year, shall we not ? ” 
“Oh ! Eugenie, why not go and see the Cruchots about it? ” 
“ No, no, that would be putting ourselves in their power; 
I should be entirely in their hands then. Besides, I have 
made up my mind. I have acted quite rightly, and I repent 
of nothing ; God will protect me. May His holy will be done! 
Ah! if you had read that letter, mother, you would have 
thought of nothing but him.” 

The next morning, January i, 1820, the mother and 
daughter were in an agony of distress that they could not 
hide; sheer terror suggested the simple expedient of omitting 
the solemn visit to Grandet’s room. The bitter weather 
served as an excuse; the winter of 1819-20 was the coldest 
that had been known for years, and snow lay deep on the roofs. 

Mine. Grandet called to her husband as soon as she heard 
him stirring, “ Grandet, just let Nanon light a bit of fire in 
here for me, the air is so sharp that I am shivering under the 
bedclothes, and at my time of life I must take care of myself. 
And then,” she went on after a little pause, “Eugenie shall 
come in here to dress. The poor girl may do herself a mis¬ 
chief if she dresses in her own room in such cold. We will 
come downstairs into the sitting-room and wish you a happy 
New Year there by the fire.” 

“ Tut, tut, tut, what a tongue ! What a way to begin the 
year, Mme. Grandet! You have never said so much in your 
life before. You have not had a sop of bread in wine, I sup¬ 
pose ? ” 

H 



162 


EUGiNIE GRA^DET, 


There was a moment’s pause. Doubtless his wife’s pro¬ 
posal suited his notions, for he said, “ Very well, I will do as 
you wish, Mme. Grandet. You really are a good sort of 
woman, it would be a pity for you to expire before you are 
due, though, as a rule, the La Bertellieres make old bones, 
don’t they, hey?” he cried, after a pause. “Well, their 
money has fallen in at last; I forgive them,” and he coughed. 

“ You are in spirits this morning,” said the poor wife. 

“ I always am in spirits.” 

Hey! hey ! cooper gay, 

Mend your tub and take your pay. 

He had quite finished dressing, and came into his wife’s 
room. “Yes, in the name of goodness! it is a mighty 
hard frost, all the same. , We shall have a good breakfast 
to-day, wife. Des Grassins has sent me a pat6 de foies gras, 
truffled ! I am going round to the coach office to see after it. 
He should have sent a double napoleon for Eugenie along 
with it,” said the cooper, coming closer, and lowering his 
voice. “ I have no gold, I certainly had a few old coins still 
left, I may tell you that in confidence, but I had to let them 
go in the course of business,” and by way of celebrating the 
first day of the year he kissed his wife on the forehead. 

“Eugenie,” cried the kind mother, as soon as Grandet 
had gone, “ I don’t know which side of the bed your father 
got out on, but he is in a good humor this morning. Pshaw I 
we shall pull through.” 

“ What can have come over the master ? ” cried Nanon as 
she came into the room to light the fire. “ First of all, he 
says, ‘ Good-morning, great stupid, a happy New Year! 
Go upstairs and light a fire in my wife’s room ; she is feeling 
cold.’ I thought I must be off my head when I saw him hold¬ 
ing out his hand with a six-franc piece in it that hadn’t been 
clipped a bit ! There ! madame, only look at it! Oh I he 
is a worthy man, all the same—he is a good man, he is. 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


163 


There are some as get harder-hearted the older they grow; 
but he turns sweeter, like your cordial that improves with 
keeping. He is a very good and a very excellent man-” 

Grandet’s speculation had been completely successful; this 
was the cause of his high spirits. M. des Grassins—after 
deducting various amounts which the cooper owed him, partly 
for discounting Dutch bills to the amount of a hundred and 
fifty thousand francs, and partly for advances of money for 
the purchase of a hundred thousand livres worth of consols— 
M. des Grassins was sending him, by diligence, thirty thou¬ 
sand francs in crowns, the remainder (after the aforesaid 
deductions had been made) of the cooper’s half-yearly divi¬ 
dends, and informed Grandet that consols were steadily rising. 
They stood at eighty-nine at the present moment, and well- 
known capitalists were buying for the next account at the end 
of January at ninety-two. In two months Grandet had 
made twelve per cent, on his capital; he had straightened his 
accounts; and henceforward he would receive fifty thousand 
francs every half-year, clear of taxes or any outgoing ex¬ 
penses. In short, he had grasped the theory of consols (a 
class of investment of which the provincial mind is exceed¬ 
ingly shy), and, looking ahead, he beheld himself the master 
of six millions of francs in five years’ time—six millions, 
which would go on accumulating with scarcely any trouble on 
his part—six millions of francs ! And there was the value of 
his landed property to add to this; he saw himself in a fair 
way to build up a colossal fortune. The six francs given to 
Nanon were perhaps in reality the payment for an immense 
service which the girl had unwittingly done her master. 

*‘Oho! what can M. Grandet be after? He is running 
as if there were a fire somewhere,” the shopkeepers said to 
each other as they took down their shutters that New Year’s 
morning. 

A little later when they saw him coming back from the 



164 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


quay followed by a porter from the coach office, who was 
wheeling a barrow piled up with little bags full of some¬ 
thing— 

‘‘Ah ! ” said they, water always makes for the river, the 
old boy was hurrying after his crowns.” 

They flow in on him from Paris, and Froidfond, and Hol¬ 
land,” said one. 

‘‘ He will buy Saumur before he has done,” cried 
another. 

“ He does not care a rap for the cold ; he is always looking 
after his business,” said a woman to her husband. 

“ Hi ! M. Grandet! if you have more of that than you 
know what to do with, I can help you to get rid of some 
of it.” 

“ Eh ! they are only coppers,” said the vine-grower. 

Silver, he means,” said the porter in alow voice. 

“ Keep a still tongue in your head, if you want me to 
bear you in mind,” said M. Grandet .as he opened the 
door. 

‘‘Oh ! the old fox, I thought he was deaf,” said the porter 
to himself, “ but it looks as though he could hear well enough 
in cold weather.” 

“ Here is a franc for a New Year’s gift, and keep quiet 
about this. Off with you! Nanon will bring back the 
barrow. Nanon ! ” cried Grandet, “are the women-folk gone 
to mass?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ Come, look sharp, and lend a hand here, then,” he cried, 
and loaded her with the bags. In another minute the crowns 
were safely transferred to his room, where he locked himself in. 

“ Thump on the wall when breakfast is ready,” he called 
through the door, and take the wheelbarrow back to the coach 
office.” 

It was ten o’clock before the family breakfasted. 

“Your father will not ask to see your gold now,” said 



EUG±NIE GRANDET. 


165 


Mme. Grandet as they came back from mass; “ and if he does, 
you can shiver and say it is too cold to go up stairs for it. We 
shall have time to make up the money again before your 
birthday-” 

Grandet came down the stairs with his head full of schemes 
for transforming the five-franc pieces just received from Paris 
into gold coin, which should be neither clipped nor light 
weight. He thought of his admirably timed investment in 
government stock, and made up his mind that he would con¬ 
tinue to put his money into consols until they rose to a hun¬ 
dred francs. Such meditations as these boded ill for Eugenie. 
As soon as he came in the two women wished him a prosperous 
New Year, each in her own way; Mme. Grandet was grave 
and ceremonious, but his daughter put her arms round his 
neck and kissed him. “Aha! child,” he said, kissing her 
on both cheeks, “I am thinking and working for you, you 

see !-1 want you to be happy, and if you are to be happy, 

you must have money; for you won’t get anything without 
it. Look I here is a brand new napoleon, I sent to Paris on 
purpose for it. In the name of goodness ! there is not a speck 
of gold in the house, except yours, you are the one who has 
the gold. Let me see your gold, little girl.” 

“ Bah 1 it is too cold, let us have breakfast,” Eugenie an¬ 
swered. 

“Well, then, after breakfast we will have a look at it, eh? 
It will be good for our digestions. That great des Grassins 
sent us this, all the same,” he went on, “so get your break¬ 
fast, children, for it costs us nothing. Des Grassins is going 
on nicely; I am pleased with him; the old fish is doing 
Charles a service, and all free gratis. Really, he is managing 
poor dear Grandet’s affairs very cleverly. Ououh 1 ououh ! ” 
he cried, with his mouth full, “ this is good ! Eat away, wife, 
there is enough here to last us for two days at least.” 

“lam not hungry. I am very poorly, you know that very 
well.” 



166 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


“Oh ! Ah! but you have a sound constitution ; you are a 
La Bertelliere, and you can put away a great deal without any 
fear of damaging yourself. You may be a trifle sallow, but I 
have a liking for yellow myself.” 

The prisoner shrinking from a public and ignominious 
death could not well await his doom with a more sickening 
dread than Mine. Grandet and Eugenie felt as they foresaw 
the end of breakfast and the inevitable sequel. The more 
boisterously the cooper talked and ate, the lower sank their 
spirits; but to the girl, in this crisis, a certain support was 
not lacking, love was strong within her. “ I would die a 
thousand deaths,” she thought, “ for him, for him 1 ” 

She looked at her mother, and courage and defiance shone 
in her eyes. 

By eleven o’clock they had finished breakfast. “ Clear 
everything away,” Grandet told Nanon, “but leave us the 
table. We can look over your little treasure more comfortably 
so,” he said with his eyes on Eugenie. “ Little^ said I ? ’Tis 
not so small, though, upon my word. Your coins altogether 
are actually worth five thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine 
francs, then with forty more this morning, that makes six 
thousand francs all but one. Well, I will give you another 

franc to make up the sum, because, you see, little girl- 

Well 1 now, why are you listening to us 1 Just take yourself 
off, Nanon, and set about your work ! ” 

Nanon vanished. 

“ Listen, Eugenie, you must let me have your gold. You 
will not refuse to let your papa have it ? Eh, little daughter?” 

Neither of the women spoke. 

“ I myself have no gold left. I had some once, but I have 
none now. I will give you six thousand francs in silver for 
it, and you shall invest it ; I will show you how. There is 
really no need to think of a dozen. When you are married 
(which will be before very long) I will find a husband for you 
who will give you the handsomest dozen that has ever been 



E UGEA IE GRA NDE T. 


167 


heard of hereabouts. There is a splendid opportunity just 
now ; you can invest your six thousand francs in government 
stock, and every six months, when dividends are due, you 
will have about two hundred francs coming in, all clear of 
taxes, and no repairs to pay for, and no frosts nor hail nor 
bad seasons, none of all the tiresome drawbacks you have to 
lay your account with if you put your money into land. You 
don’t like to part with your gold, eh ? Is that it, little girl ? 
Never mind, let me have it all the same. I will look out for 
gold coins for you, ducats from Holland, and genovines and 
Portuguese moidores and rupees, the Mogul’s rupees; and 
what with the coins I shall give you on your birthday and so 
forth, you will have half your little hoard again in three years 
time, beside the six thousand francs in the funds. What do 
you say, little girl ? Look up, child ! There ! there ! bring 
it here, my pet. You owe me a good kiss for telling you 
business secrets and mysteries of the life and death of five-franc 
pieces. Five-franc pieces! Yes, indeed, the coins live and 
gad about just like men do ; they go and come and sweat and 
multiply.” 

Eugenie rose and made a few steps towards the door; then 
she turned abruptly, looked her father full in the face, and said — 

“ All my gold is gone; I have none left.” 

“ All your gold is gone ! ” echoed Grandet, starting up, as 
a horse might rear when the cannon thunders not ten paces 
from him. 

“ Yes, it is all gone.” 

Eugenie ! you are dreaming ! ” 

“No.” 

“ By my father’s pruning-hook ! ” Whenever the cooper 
swore in this fashion, the floors and ceilings trembled. 

“Lord have mercy!” cried Nanon ; “how white the 
mistress is ! ” 

“ Grandet 1 you will kill me with your angry fits,” said the 
poor wife. 


168 


EUGENIE GRANDET, 


“Tut, tut, tut; none of your family ever die. Now, 
Eugenie ! what have you done with your money? ” he burst 
out as he turned upon her. 

The girl was on her knees beside Mme. Grandet. 

“ Look 1 sir,” she said, “ my mother is very ill-do not 

kill her.” 

Grandet was alarmed ; his wife’s dark, sallow complexion 
had grown so white. 

“ Nanon, come and help me up to bed,” she said in a 
feeble voice. “ This is killing me-” 

Nanon gave an arm to her mistress, and Eugenie supported 
her on the other side; but it was only with the greatest diffi¬ 
culty that they reached her room, for the poor mother’s 
strength completely failed her, and she stumbled at every 
step. Grandet was left alone in the parlor. After a while, 
however, he came part of the way upstairs, and called out— 

“ Eugenie ! Come down again as soon as your mother is 
in bed.” 

“ Yes, father.” 

In no long time she returned to him, after comforting her 
mother as best she could. 

“Now, my daughter,” Grandet addressed her, “ you will 
tell me where your money is.” 

“If I am not perfectly free to do as I like with your 
presents, father, please take them back again,” said Eug6nie 
coldly. She went to the chimney-piece for the napoleon, and 
gave it to her father. 

Grandet pounced upon it, and slipped it into his waistcoat 
pocket. 

“I will never give you anything again, I know,” he said, 
pointing his thumb at her. “You look down on your father, do 
you ? You have no confidence in him ? Do you know wdiat 
a father is ? If he is not everything to you, he is nothing. 
Now ; where is your gold ? ’ ’ 

“ I do respect you and love you, father, in spite of your 




EUGENIE GRANDET. 


169 


anger ; but I would very humbly point out to you that I am 
twenty-one years old. You have told me that I am of age 
often enough for me to know it. I have done as I liked with 
my money, and rest assured that it is in good hands-” 

“ Whose?” 

“ That is an inviolable secret,” she said. “ Have you not 
your secrets ? ” 

“ Am I not the head of my family ? May I not be allowed 
to have my own business affairs? ” 

“This is my own affair.” 

“ It must be something very unsatisfactory. Mile. Grandet, 
if you cannot tell your own father about it.” 

“It is perfectly satisfactory, and I cannot tell my father 
about it.” 

“Tell me, at any rate, when you parted with your gold.” 

Eugenie shook her head. 

“ You still had it on your birthday, hadn’t you, eh ? ” 

But if greed had made her father crafty, love had taught 
Eugenie to be wary; she shook her head again. 

“ Did any one ever hear of such obstinacy, or of such a 
robbery ? ” cried Grandet, in a voice which gradually rose till 
it rang through the house. “ What! here, in my house, in 
my own house, some one has taken your gold ! Taken all the 
gold that there was in the place ! And I am not to know who 
it was ? Gold is a precious thing. The best of girls go 
wrong and throw themselves away one way or another; that 
happens among great folk, and even among decent citizens; 
but think of throwing gold away ! For you gave it to some¬ 
body, I suppose, eh? ” 

Eugenie gave no sign. 

“ Did any one ever see such a daughter! Can you be a 
child of mine? If you have parted with your money, you 
must have a receipt for it-” 

“ Was I free to do as I wished with it—Yes or no? Was it 
mine?” 



170 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


“Why, you are a child.” 

“ I am of age.” 

At first Grandet was struck dumb by his daughter daring to 
argue with him, and in this way! He turned pale, stamped, 
swore, and finding words at last, he shouted— 

“ Accursed serpent! Miserable girl! Oh ! you know well 
that I love you, and you take advantage of it ! You ungrateful 
child ! She would rob and murder her own father ! Pardieu ! 
you would have thrown all we have at the feet of that vaga¬ 
bond with the morocco boots. By my father’s pruning-hook, 
I cannot disinherit you, but in the name of thunder! I can curse 
you; you and your cousin and your children. Nothing good can 

come out of this ; do you hear ? If it was to Charles that- 

But, no, that is impossible. What if that miserable puppy 
should have robbed me ? ’ ’ 

He glared at his daughter, who was still silent and unmoved. 

“ She does not stir ! She does not flinch ! She is more of 
a Grandet than I am. You did not give your gold away for 
nothing, anyhow. Come, now; tell me about it?” 

Eug6nie looked up at her father; her satirical glance exas¬ 
perated him. 

“ Eugenie, this is my house; so long as you are under your 
father’s roof you must do as your father bids you. The priests 
command you to obey me.” 

Eugenie bent her head again. 

“You are wounding all my tenderest feelings,” he went on. 
“ Get out of my sight until you are ready to obey me. Go 
to your room and stay there until I give you leave to come 
out of it. Nanon will bring you bread and water. Do you 
hear what I say? Go ! ” 

Eugenie burst into tears, and fled away to her mother. 
Grandet took several turns in his garden without heeding the 
snow or the cold; then, suspecting that his daughter would 
be in his wife’s room, and delighted with the idea of catching 
them in flagrant disobedience to orders, he climbed the stairs 





4 *■ 


-14 







■i>^ 



y-^j iS^'* 

vy..» . - %' 


> .;• 


- '^, 





”r7“'.:*i,v,-.-o. 

jik» #1 * ♦ j »‘ ^ 


iX ' 


.V. 


I'* i 



'.•a 


r 


(\ 


■- -'V'!^ 



, ♦ 


* t 




• ♦ ■■ 
.* - 




. A 


%#!• . 


•' • 


'A 



« . ♦ , I ^4 

.-1 --v V 


’ ^ .- r' - 

'-: sS^-*'.' ■'* ■ / 


^ ’ * * * .» 


kk 






> (Xii ‘ 





'■'✓» j' ' f t., 


<T V<v 


s%r y 



•W . 


t'-.-? '*. :fe,| 



*♦ 


Hr 




v;-v 


, ''iv 


1/ 


^ vx 


« « 


« ^ 



•’ ^ ^ 



li/*' 




’* i 


r 


^« I 




- 'Cl' 





r*^^ ■ 



-•• »r- 


'•'f ••' . « • • 


"v/y J®i 


,-X: 4 :^' yj 
■ * •'L.UiL'.- 











“do you hear what I SAY^ GOl ” 
















▼ 9 








»T>. 




l»^ 


<s 


K 


<*#- 










■Ci 




% 




V^s 








h 


, j 


y i 




h 








'4?’ I 








Sj 


♦ ' I 

-‘J ^ * 


'llrt. .'1^, 


* .-. .-.■ •" 





V 


♦FfJ 




4 ' 






•v'^ 

» . ' -V ‘ A *Jfu'^s .. • 


,V I 1 




■: ■ ■ :y^!^^, /■*, ■;,. ir* ■ 

V' ^r... ■. A .^ . V V. ’.,-.>™.'^^ '‘ 

irY'"'* vw ■ 


* k 


t 


* 






:.y7‘ _*•- 




•I, 


.-•. 1-- < 9 ^ .£ 






> 


LSV' 


\\ '} 




■i" <' i 



,1 r.v . .j>,,:V ^ ..» 


•/ 








V#, 

J, • ■ ■' .. .\': < 


L'fJrf*! 


;t ' 


'm 


Y, 


'#X‘ .‘-^B 


> 






■f.‘ 





*■.*1 


s 


J 


1 

‘ ' # 


1 >• * 


Uy"-. 

» 

..‘■;ts’*t! 

t 

« A'' 

- ^ *# 

9 

■ ■>. •' 

• i 







EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


171 


as stealthy as a cat, and suddenly appeared in Mine. Grandet’s 
room. He was right; she was stroking Eugenie’s hair, and 
the girl lay with her face hidden in her mother’s breast. 

“ Poor child ! Never mind, your father will relent.” 

‘‘She has no longer a father ! ” said the cooper. “Is it 
really possible, Mme. Grandet, that we have brought such a 
disobedient daughter into the world ? A pretty bringing up; 
and pious, too, above all things ! Well! how is it you are not 
in your room ? Come, off to prison with you; to prison, miss.” 

“ Do you mean to take my daughter away from me, sir ? ” 
said Mme. Grandet, as she raised a flushed face and bright, 
feverish eyes. 

“If you want to keep her, take her along with you, and 

the liouse will be rid of you both at once- Thunder! 

Where is the gold ? What has become of tTTe gold? ” 

Eugenie rose to her feet, looked proudly at her father, and 
went into her room; he turned the key in the door. 

“ Nanon ! ” he shouted, “you can rake out the fire in the 
parlor; ” then he came back and sat down in an easy-chair that 
stood between the fire and his wife’s bedside, saying as he did 
so, “ Of course she gave her gold to that miserable seducer, 
Charles, who only cared for our money,” 

Mme. Grandet’s love for her daughter gave her courage in 
the face of this danger ; to all appearance she was deaf, 
dumb, and blind to all that was implied by this speech. 
She turned on her bed so as to avoid the angry glitter of her 
husband’s eyes. 

“I knew nothing about all this,” she said. “Your anger 
makes me so ill, that if my forebodings come true I shall only 
leave this room when they carry me out feet foremost. I 
think you might have spared me this scene, sir. I, at all 
events, have never caused you any vexation. Your daughtei 
loves you, and I am sure she is as innocent as a newborn 
babe ; so do not make her miserable, and take back your word. 
This cold is terribly sharp ; it might make her seriously ill.*’ 



172 


EUG&NIE GRANDET, 


“ I shall neither see her nor speak to her. She shall stop 
in her room on bread and water until she has done as her 
father bids her. What the devil! the head of a family ought 
to know when gold goes out of his house, and where it 
goes. She had the only rupees that there are in France, 
for aught I know; then there were genovines besides, and 
Dutch ducats-” 

“ Eugenie is our only child, and even if she had flung them 
into the water-” 

“ Into the water ! ” shouted the worthy cooper. Into the 
water ! Mme. Grandet, you are raving ! When I say a thing 
I mean it, as you well know. If you want to have peace in the 
house, get her to confess to you, and worm this secret out of her. 
Women understand each other, and are cleverer at this sort 
of thing than we are. Whatever she may have done, I cer¬ 
tainly shall not eat her. Is she afraid of me? If she had 
covered her cousin with gold from head to foot, he is safe on 
the high-seas by this time, hein! We cannot run after 
him-” 

“Really, sir-” his wife began. 

But Mme. Grandet’s nature had developed during her 
daughter’s trouble ; she felt more keenly, and perhaps her 
thoughts moved more quickly, or it may be that excitement 
and the strain upon her overwrought nerves had sharpened 
her mental faculties. She saw the wen on her husband’s 
face twitch ominously even as she began to speak, and 
changed her purpose without changing her voice. 

“ Really, sir, have I any more authority over her than you 
have ? She has never said a word about it to me. She takes 
after you.” 

“ Goodness ! your tongue is hung in the middle this morn¬ 
ing ! Tut, tut, tut; you are going to fly in my face, I sup¬ 
pose? Perhaps you and she are both in it.” 

He glared at his wife. 

“ Really, M. Grandet, if you want to kill me, you have 






EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


173 


only to keep on as you are doing. I tell you, sir, and if it were 
to cost me my life, I would say it again—you are too hard on 
your daughter; she is a great deal more sensible than you 
are. The money belonged to her; she could only have made 
a good use of it, and our good works ought to be known to 
God alone. Sir, I implore you, take Eugenie back into favor. 
It will lessen the effect of the shock your anger gave me, and 
perhaps will save my life. My daughter, sir; give me back 
my daughter ! ” 

“ I am off, ’ he said. It is unbearable here in my house, 

when a mother and daughter talk and argue as if-Brooouh ! 

Pouah ! You have given me bitter New Year’s gifts, Eugenie !” 
he called. “ Yes, yes, cry away ! You shall repent it, do you 
hear ? What is the good of taking the sacrament six times a 
quarter if you give your father’s gold away on the sly to an 
idle rascal who will break your heart when you have nothing 
else left to give him ? You will find out what he is, that 
Charles of yours, with his morocco boots and his stand-off 
airs. He can have no heart and no conscience either, when 
he dares to carry off a poor girl’s money without the consent 
of her parents.” 

As soon as the street-door was shut, Eugenie stole out of 
her room and came to her mother’s bedside. 

‘'You were very brave for your daughter’s sake,” she said. 

“You see where crooked ways lead us, child !-You have 

made me tell a lie.” 

“ Oh ! mother, I will pray to God to let all the punish¬ 
ment fall on me.” 

“Is it true?” asked Nanon, coming upstairs in dismay, 
“ that mademoiselle here is to be put on bread and water for 
the rest of her life ? ” 

“ What does it matter, Nanon?” asked Eugenie calmly. 

“ Why, before I would eat ‘ kitchen ’ while the daughter 

of the house is eating dry bread,, I would-no, no, it won’t 

do,” 




174 


EUG^INIE GRANDET. 


“ Don’t say a word about it, Nanon,” Eugenie warned her. 

It would stick in my throat; but you shall see.” 

Grandet dined alone, for the first time in twenty-four 
years. 

‘'So you are a widower, sir,” said Nanon. “ It is a very 
dismal thing to be a widower when you have a wife and 
daughter in the house.” 

“I did not speak to you, did I? Keep a still tongue in 
your head, or you will have to go. What have you in that 
saucepan that I can hear boiling away on the stove? ” 

“ Some dripping that I am melting down-” 

“ There will be some people here this evening; light the 
fire.” 

The Cruchots and their friends, Mme. des Grassins and her 
son, all came in about eight o’clock, and to their amazement 
saw neither Mme. Grandet nor her daughter. 

“ My wife is not very well to-day, and Eugenie is upstairs 
with her,” replied the old cooper, without a trace of perturba¬ 
tion on his face. 

After an hour spent, in more or less trivial talk, Mme. des 
Grassins, who had gone upstairs to see Mme. Grandet, came 
down again to the dining-room, and was met with a general 
inquiry of “ How is Mme. Grandet ? ” 

“ She is very far from well,” the lady said gravely. “Her 
health seems to me to be in a very precarious state. At her 
time of life you ought to take great care of her, papa 
Grandet.” 

“ We shall see,” said the vine-grower abstractedly, and the 
whole party took leave of him. As soon as the Cruchots 
were out in the street and the door was shut behind them, 
Mme. des Grassins turned to them and said, “ Something has 
happened among the Grandets. The mother is very ill; she 
herself has no idea how ill she is, and the girl’s eyes are red, 
as if she had been crying for a long while. Are they wanting 
to marry her against her will ? ” 



EUGENIE GRANDET 


175 


That night, when the cooper had gone to bed, Nanon, in 
list slippers, stole up to Eugenie’s room, and displayed a 
raised pie, which she had managed to bake in a saucepan. 

Here, mademoiselle,” said the kind soul, “ Cornoiller 
brought a hare for me. You eat so little that the pie will last 
you for quite a week, and there is no fear of its spoiling in 
this frost. You shall not live on dry bread, at any rate; it is 
not at all good for you.” 

“Poor Nanon!” said Eugenie, as she pressed the girl’s 
hand. 

“ I have made it very dainty and nice, and he never found 
out about it. I paid for the lard and the bay-leaves out of my 
six francs; I can surely do as I like with my own money,” 
and the old servant fled, thinking that she heard Grandet 
stirring. 

Several months went by. The cooper went to see his wife 
at various times in the day, and never mentioned his daugh¬ 
ter’s name—never saw her, nor made the slightest allusion to 
her. Mine. Grandet’s health grew worse and worse; she had 
not once left her room since that terrible January morning. 
But nothing shook the old cooper’s determination ; he was 
hard, cold, and unyielding as a block of granite. He came 
and went, his manner of life was in nowise altered ; but he 
did not stammer now, and he talked less; perhaps, too, in 
matters of business, people found him harder than before, 
but errors crept into his book-keeping. 

Something had certainly happened in the Grandet family, 
both Cruchotins and Grassinistes were agreed on that head; 
and “ What can be the matter with the Grandets ? ” became a 
stock question which people asked each other at every social 
gathering in Saumur. 

Eugenie went regularly to church, escorted by Nanon. 
If Mme. des Grassins spoke to her in the porch as she came 
out, the girl would answer evasively, and the lady’s curiosity 
remained ungratified. But after two months spent in this 


176 


EUG&NIE GRANDET 


fashion it was almost impossible to hide the real state of affairs 
from Mme. des Grassins or from the Cruchots; a time came 
when all pretexts were exhausted, and Eugenie’s constant 
absence still demanded an explanation. A little later, though 
no one could say how or when the secret leaked out, it became 
common property, and the whole town knew that ever since 
New Year’s Day Mile. Grandet had been locked up in her 
room by her father’s orders, and that there she lived on bread 
and water in solitary confinement, and without a fire. Nanon, 
it was reported, cooked dainties for her, and brought food 
secretly to her room at night. Further particulars were given. 
It was even said that only when Grandet was out of the house 
could the young girl nurse her mother, or indeed see her at all. 

People blamed Grandet severely. He was regarded as an 
outlaw, as it were, by the whole town; all his hardness, his 
bad faith was remembered against him, and every one shunned 
him. They whispered and pointed at him as he went by; 
and as his daughter passed along the crooked street on her 
way to mass or to vespers, with Nanon at her side, people 
would hurry to their windows and look curiously at the 
wealthy heiress’ face—a face so sad and so divinely sweet. 

The town gossip reached her ears as slowly as it reached her 
father’s. Her imprisonment and her father’s displeasure were 
as nothing to her ; had she not her map of the world ? And 
from her window could she not see the little bench, the old 
wall, and the garden walks? Was not the sweetness of those 
past kisses still upon her lips? So, sustained by love and by 
the consciousness of her innocence in the sight of God, she 
could patiently endure her solitary life and her father’s anger; 
but there was another sorrow, so deep and so overwhelming 
that Eugenie could not find a refuge from it. The gentle, 
patient mother was gradually passing away; it seemed as if 
the beauty of her soul shone out more and more brightly in 
those dark days as she drew nearer to the tomb. Eugenie 
often bitterly blamed herself for this illness, telling herself 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


177 


that she had been the innocent cause of the painful malady 
that was slowly consuming her mother’s life; and, in spite of 
all her mother said to comfort her, this remorseful feeling 
made her cling more closely to the love she was to lose so 
soon. Every morning, as soon as her father had left the 
house, she went to sit at her mother’s bedside. Nanon used 
to bring her breakfast to her there. But for poor Eugenie in 
her sadness, this suffering was almost more than she could 
bear; she looked at her mother’s face, and then at Nanon, 
with tears in her eyes, and was dumb; she did not dare to 
speak of her cousin now. It was always Mme. Grandet who 
began to talk of him; it was she who was forced to say, 

Where is Why does /i<r not write? ” 

Neither mother nor daughter had any idea of the distance. 

“ Let us think of him without talking about him, mother,” 
Eugenie would answer. “You are suffering; you come be¬ 
fore every one; ” and when she said “every one,” Eugenie 
meant Am. 

“I have no wish to live any longer, child,” Mme. Grandet 
used to say. “ God in His protecting care has led me to look 
forward joyfully to death as the end of my sorrows.” 

Everything that she said was full of Christian piety. For 
the first few months of the year her husband breakfasted in 
her room, and always, as he walked restlessly about, he heard 
the same words from her, uttered with angelic gentleness, but 
with firmness; the near approach of death had given her the 
courage which she had lacked all her life. 

“ Thank you, sir, for the interest which you take in my 
health,” she said in response to the merest formality of an in¬ 
quiry; “but if you really wish to sweeten the bitterness of 
my last moments, and to alleviate my sufferings, forgive our 
daughter, and act like a Christian, a husband, and a father.” 

At these words Grandet would come and sit down by the 
bed, much as a man who is threatened by a shower betakes 
himself resignedly to the nearest sheltering archway. He 
12 


178 


EUGENIE GRANDET, 


would say nothing, and his wife might say what she liked. 
To the most pathetic, loving, and fervent prayers, he would 
reply, My poor wife, you are looking a bit pale to-day.” 

His daughter seemed to have passed entirely out of his mind ; 
the mention of her name brought no change over his stony 
face and hard-set mouth. He always gave the same vague 
answers to her pleadings, couched in almost the same words, 
and did not heed his wife’s white face, nor the tears that flowed 
down her cheeks. 

“ May God forgive you, as I do, sir,” she said. “ You will 
have need of mercy some day.” 

Since his wife’s illness had begun he had not ventured to 
make use of his formidable ‘‘Tut, tut, tut,” but his tyranny 
was not relaxed one whit by his wife’s angelic gentleness. 

Her plain face was growing almost beautiful now as a beauti¬ 
ful nature showed itself more and more, and her soul grew 
absolute. It seemed as if the spirit of prayer had purified and 
refined the homely features—as if they were lit up by some 
inner light. Which of us has not known such faces as this, 
and seen their final transfiguration—the triumph of a soul that 
has dwelt for so long among pure and lofty thoughts that they 
set their seal unmistakably upon the roughest lineaments at 
last ? The sight of this transformation wrought by the physical 
suffering which stripped the soul of the rags of humanity that 
hid it, had a certain effect, however feeble, upon that man 
of bronze—the old cooper. A stubborn habit of silence had 
succeeded to his old contemptuous ways, a wish to keep up 
his dignity as a father of a family was apparently the motive 
for this course. 

The faithful Nanon no sooner showed herself in the market¬ 
place than people began to rail at her master and to make 
jokes at his expense ; but however loudly public opinion con¬ 
demned old Grandet, the maidservant, jealous for the honor 
of the family, stoutly defended him. 

“Well, now,” she would say to those who spoke ill of hex 


eugAn/e grandet. 


179 


master, ‘Sion’t we all grow harder as we grow older? And 
would you have him different from other people ? Just hold 
your lying tongues. Mademoiselle lives like a queen. She 
is all by herself no doubt, but she likes it; and my master 
and mistress have their very good reasons for what they do.” 

At last, one evening towards the end of spring, Mme. Gran¬ 
det, feeling that this trouble, even more than her illness, was 
shortening her days, and that any farther attempt on her part 
to obtain forgiveness for Eugenie was hopeless, confided her 
troubles to the Cruchots. 

“ To put a girl of twenty-two on a diet of bread and 

water!-” cried the President de Bonfons, “ and without 

just and sufficient cause I Why, that constitutes legal cruelty; 

she might lodge a complaint ; in as much as -” 

Come, nephew,” said the notary, “that is enough of 
your law court jargon. Be easy, madame; I will bring this 
imprisonment to an end to-morrow.” 

Eugenie heard, and came out of her room. 

“ Gentlemen,” she said, impelled by a certain pride, “do 
nothing in this matter, I beg of you. My father is master 
in his own house, and so long as I live under his roof I ought 
to obey him. No one has any right to criticise his conduct; 
he is answerable to God, and to God alone. If you have any 
friendly feeling for me, I entreat you to say nothing whatever 
about this. If you expose my father to censure, you would 
lower us all in the eyes of the world. I am very thankful to 
you, gentlemen, for the interest you have taken in me, and 
you will oblige me still farther if you will put a stop to the 
gossip that is going on in the town. I only heard of it by 
accident.” 

“She is right,” said Mme. Grandet. 

“ Mademoiselle, the best possible way to stop people’s talk 
v/ould be to set you at liberty,” said the old notary respect¬ 
fully ; he was struck with the beauty which solitude and love 
and sadness had brought into Eugenie’s face. 




180 


EUGJ^NIE GEANDET. 


Well, Eugenie, leave it in M. Cruchot’s hands, as be 
seems to think success is certain. He knows your father, and 
he knows, too, how to put the matter before him. You and 
your father must be reconciled at all costs, if you want me to 
be happy during the little time I have yet to live.” 

The next morning Grandet went out to take a certain num¬ 
ber of turns round the little garden, a habit that he had fallen 
into during Eugenie’s incarceration. He chose to take the 
air while Eugenie was dressing; and when he had reached the 
gi;eat walnut tree, he stood behind it for a few moments and 
looked at her window. He watched her as she brushed her 
long hair, and there was a sharp struggle doubtless between 
his natural stubborn will and a longing to take his daughter in 
his arms and kiss her. 

He would often go to sit on the little worm-eaten bench 
where Charles and Eugenie had vowed to love each other 
for ever; and she, his daughter, also watched her father fur¬ 
tively, or looked into her glass and saw him reflected there, 
and the garden and the bench. If he rose and began to walk 
again, she went to sit in the window. It was pleasant to her 
to be there. She studied the bit of old wall, the delicate 
sprays of wild flowers that grew in its crevices, the maiden¬ 
hair fern, the morning glories, and a little plant with thick 
leaves and white or yellow flowers, a sort of stone-crop that 
grows everywhere among the vines at Saumur and Tours. 

Old M. Cruchot came early on a bright June morning and 
found the vine-grower sitting on the little bench with his back 
against the wall, absorbed in watching his daughter. 

“What can I do for you, M. Cruchot?” he asked, as he 
became aware of the notary’s presence. 

“ I have come about a matter of business.” 

“ Aha ! Have you some gold to exchange for crowns ? ” 

“ No, no. It is not a question of money this time, but of 
your daughter Eugenie. Everybody is talking about you 
and her.” 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


181 

“What business is it of theirs? A man’s house is his 
castle.” 

“Just so; and a man can kill himself if he has a mind 
to, or he can do worse, he can throw his money out of the 
windows.” 

“What?” 

“ Eh ! but your wife is very ill, my friend. You ought 
even to call in M. Bergerin, her life is in danger. If she were 
to die for want of proper care, you would hear of it, I 
am sure.” 

“Tut, tut, tut!” you know what is the matter with her, 
and when once one of these doctors sets foot in your house, 
they will come five or six times a day.” 

“After all, Grandet, you will do as you think best. We 
are old friends; there*is no one in all Saumur who has your 
interests more at heart than I, so it was only my duty to let 
you know this. Whatever happens, you are responsible, and 
you understand your own business, so there it is. Besides, 
that was not what I came to speak about. There is something 
else more serious for you, perhaps; for, after all, you do not 
wish to kill your wife, she is too useful to you. Just think 
what your position would be if anything happened to Mme. 
Grandet; you would have your daughter to face. You would 
have to give an account to Eugenie of her mother’s share of 
your joint estate; and if she chose, your daughter might de¬ 
mand her mother’s fortune, for she, and not you, will succeed 
to it; and in that case you might have to sell Froidfond.” 

Cruchot’s words were like a bolt from the blue; for much 
as the worthy cooper knew about business, he knew very little 
law. The idea of a forced sale had never occurred to 
him. 

“ So I should strongly recommend you to treat her kindly,” 
the notary concluded. 

“ But do you know what she has done, Cruchot ? ” 

“ No. What was it ? ” asked the notary; he felt curious to 


182 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


know the reason of the quarrel, and a confidence from old 
Grandet was an interesting novelty. 

She has given away her gold.” 

“ Oh ! well, it belonged to her, didn’t it? ” 

“ That is what they all say ! ” said Grandet, letting his arms 
fall with a tragic gesture. 

“ And for a trifle like that you would shut yourself out 
from all hope of any concessions which you will want her to 
make if her mother dies? ” 

“ Ah ! do you call six thousand francs in gold a trifle?” 

“Eh! my old friend, have you any idea what it will cost 
you to have your property valued and divided if Eugenie 
should compel you to do so?” 

“ What would it cost ? ” 

“ Two, three, or even four thousand francs. How could 
you know what it was worth unless you put it up to public 
auction? While if you come to an understanding-” 

“ By my father’s pruning hook!” cried the vine-grower, 
sinking back, and turning quite pale. “We will see about 
this, Cruchot.” 

After a moment of agony or of dumb bewilderment, 
Grandet spoke, with his eyes fixed on his neighbor’s face. 
“Life is very hard,” he said. “It is full of troubles. Cru¬ 
chot,” he went on, earnestly, “ you are incapable of deceiving 
me; give me your word of honor that this ditty of yours has 
a solid foundation. Let me look at the Code ; I want to see 
the Code ! ” 

“ My poor friend,” said the notary, “ I ought to understand 
my own profession.” 

“Then it is really true? I shall be plundered, cheated, 
robbed, and murdered by my own daughter ! ” 

“ She is her mother’s heiress.” 

“Then what is the good of having children? Oh! my 
wife, I love my wife; luckily, she has a sound constitution; 
she is a La Bertelliere.” 



EUGENIE GRANDEE 


183 


She has not a month to live.” 

The cooper struck his forehead, took a few paces, and then 
came back again. 

“ What is to be done? ” he demanded of Cruchot, with a 
tragic expression on his face. 

Well, perhaps Eugenie might simply give up her claims 
to her mother’s property. You do not mean to disinherit her, 
do you ? But do not treat her harshly if you want her to 
make a concession of that kind. I am speaking against my 
own interests, my friend. How do I make a living but by 
drawing up inventories and conveyances and deeds of arrange¬ 
ment and by winding up estates? ” 

“ We shall see, we shall see. Let us say no more about this 
now, Cruchot. You have wrung my very soul. Have you 
taken any gold lately ? ” 

” No ; but I have some old louis, nine or ten perhaps, 
which you can have. Look here, my good friend, make it up 
with Eugenie ; all Saumur is pointing a finger at you.” 

” The rogues ! ” 

“ Well, consols have risen to ninety-nine, so you should be 
satisfied for once in your life.” 

At ninety-nine, Cruchot?” 

‘‘Yes.” 

“ Hey ! hey ! ninety-nine ! ” the old man said, as he went 
with the notary to the street-door. He felt too much agitated 
by what he had just heard to stay quietly at home; so he went 
up to his wife’s room. 

“ Come, mother, you may spend the day with your daughter, 
I am going to Froidfond. Be good, both of you, while I am 
away. This is our wedding-day, dear wife. Stay ! here are 
ten crowns for you, for the FSte-Dieu procession ; you have 
wanted to give it for long enough. Take a holiday ! have 
iome fun, keep up your spirits and get well. Vive la joie ” 

He threw down ten crowns of six francs each upon the bed, 
^ook her f^ce in hi§ bands, and kissed her on the forehead. 


184 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


“ You are feeling better, dear wife, are you not ? ” 

“ But how can you think of receiving God, who forgives, 
into your house, when you have shut your heart against your 
daughter? ” she said, with deep feeling in her voice. 

“Tut, tut, tut! ” said the father soothingly; “we will see 
about that.” 

“Merciful heaven! Eugenie!” called the mother, her 
face flushed with joy ; “ Eugenie, come and give your father 
a kiss, you are forgiven ! ” But her worthy father had van¬ 
ished. He fled with all his might in the direction of his 
vineyards, where he set himself to the task of constructing 
his new world out of this chaos of strange ideas. 

Grandet had just entered upon his sixty-seventh year. 
Avarice had gained a stronger hold upon him during the past 
two years of his life ; indeed, all lasting passions grow with 
man’s grow'th; and it had come to pass wdth him, as with all 
men whose lives are ruled by one master-idea, that he clung 
with all the force of his imagination to the symbol which 
represented that idea for him. Gold—toTave gold, that he 
might see and touch it, had become with him a perfect mono¬ 
mania. His disposition to tyrannize had also grown with his 
love of money, and it seemed to him to be monstrous that he 
should be called upon to give up the least portion of his prop¬ 
erty on the death of his wife. Was he to render an account 
of her fortune, and to have an inventory drawn up of every¬ 
thing he possessed—personalty and real estate, and put it all 
up to auction ? 

“ That would be stark ruin,” he said aloud to himself, as he 
stood among his vines and examined their stems. 

He made up his mind at last, and came back to Sauinur at 
dinner-time fully determined on his course. He would humor 
Eugenie, and coax and cajole her so that he might die royally, 
keeping the control of his millions in his hands until his 
latest sigh. It happened that he let himself in with his 
master key; he crept noiselessly as a wolf up the stairs to hi§ 


E ugAnie gra nde r. 


185 


wife’s room, which he entered just as Eugenie was setting the 
dressing-case, in all its golden glory, upon her mother’s bed. 
The two women had stolen a pleasure in Grandet’s absence \ 
they were looking at the portraits and tracing out Charles’ 
features in his mother’s likeness. 

“It is just his forehead and his mouth!” Eugenie was 
saying, as the vine-grower opened the door. 

Mine. Grandet saw how her husband’s eyes darted upon the 
gold. “ Oh ! God, have pity upon us ! ” she cried. 

The vine-grower seized upon the dressing-case as a tiger 
might spring upon a sleeping child. 

“ What may this be? ” he said, carrying off the treasure to 
the window, where he ensconced himself with it. “ Gold 1 
solid gold !” he cried, “and plenty of it too; there is a 
couple of pounds’ w^eight here. Aha! so this was what 
Charles gave you in exchange for your pretty gold-pieces? 
Why did you not tell me? It was a good stroke of business, 
little girl. You are your father’s own daughter, I see. 
(Eugenie trembled from head to foot.) This belongs to 
Charles, doesn’t it?” the good man went on. 

“Yes, father; it is not mine. That case is a sacred 
trust.” 

“ Tut, tut, tut I he has gone off with your money; you 
ought to make good the loss of your little treasure.” 

“Oh! father!-” 

The old man had taken out his pocket-knife, with a view to 
wrenching away a plate of the precious metal, and for the 
moment had been obliged to lay the case on a chair beside 
him. Eugenie sprang forward to secure her treasure ; but the 
cooper, who had kept an eye upon his daughter as well as 
upon the casket, put out his arm to prevent this, and thrust 
her back so roughly that she fell on to the bed. 

“ Sir ! sir ! ” cried the mother, rising and sitting upright. 

Grandet had drawn out his knife, and was about to insert 
the blade beneath the plate. 


G 


186 


eugAnie grande T 


“ Father ! ” cried Eugenie, going down on her knees and 
dragging herself nearer to him as she knelt; “ father, in the 
name of all the saints, and the Holy Virgin, for the sake of 
Christ who died on the cross, for your own soul’s salvation, 
father, if you have any regard for my life, do not touch it! 
The case is not yours, and it is not mine. It belongs to an 
unhappy kinsman, who gave it into my keeping, and 1 ought 
to give it back to him untouched.” 

“ What do you look at it for if it is a deposit? Looking 
at it is worse than touching it.” 

“Do not pull it to pieces, father! You will bring dis¬ 
honor upon me. Father I do you hear me ? ” 

“ For pity’s sake, sir! ” entreated the mother. 

“Father!” 

The shrill cry rang through the house and brought the 
frightened Nanon upstairs. Eugenie caught up a knife that 
lay within her reach. 

“Well?” said Grandet, calmly, with a cold smile on 
his lips. 

“ Sir ! you are killing me ! ” said the mother. 

“ Father, if you cut away a single scrap of gold, I shall 
stab myself with this knife. It is your doing that ray mother 
is dying, and now my death will also be laid at your door. 
It shall be wound for wound.” 

Grandet held his knife suspended above the case, looked 
at his daughter, and hesitated. 

“ Would you really do it, Eugenie ? ” he asked. 

“Yes, sir ! ” said the mother. 

“ She would do as she says,” cried Nanon. “ Do be sen¬ 
sible, sir, for once in your life.” 

The cooper wavered for a moment, looking first at the gold 
and then at his daughter. 

Mme. Grandet fainted. 

“There ! sir, you see, the mistress is dying,” cried Nanon. 
There I there ! child, do not let us fall out about a box. 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


187 


Just take it back!” cried the cooper hastily, throwing the 
case on to the bed. “ And, Nanon, go for M. Bergerin. 
Come! come! mother,” he said, and he kissed his wife’s 
hand; “never mind, there! there! we have made it up, 
haven’t we, little girl? No more dry bread; you shall eat 

whatever you like- Ah ! she is opening her eyes. Well, 

now, little mother, dear little mother, don’t take on so ! 
Look ! I am going to kiss Eugenie ! She loves her cousin, 
does she ? She shall marry him if she likes; she shall keep 
his little case for him. But you must live for a long while 
yet, my poor wife ! Come ! turn your head a little. Listen ! 
you shall have the finest altar at the Fete-Dieu that has ever 
been seen in Saurnur.” 

“ Oh ! mon Dieu ! how can you treat your wife and daugh¬ 
ter in this way I ” moaned Mme. Grandet. 

“ I will never do so again, never again ! ” cried the cooper. 
“You shall see, my poor wife.” 

He went to his strong room and returned with a handful of 
louis d’or, which he scattered on the coverlet. 

“There! Eugenie, there! wife, those are for you,” he 
said, fingering the gold coins as they lay. “Come! cheer 
up, and get well, you shall want for nothing, neither you nor 
Eugenie. There are a hundred louis for her. You will not 
give them away, will you, eh, Eugenie? ” 

Mme. Grandet and her daughter gazed at each other in 
amazement. 

“ Take back the money, father ; we want nothing, nothing 
but your love.” 

“ Oh ! well, just as you like,” he said, as he pocketed.the 
louis, “ let us live together like good friends. Let us all go 
down to the dining-room and have dinner, and play loto every 
evening, and put our two sous into the pool, and be as merry 
as the maids. Eh ! my wife? ” 

“ Alas ! how I wish that I could, if you would like it,” said 
the dying woman, “ but X am not strong enough to get up,’* ■ 



188 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


“ Poor mother ! ” said the cooper, you do not know how 
much I love you; and you too, child ! ” 

He drew his daughter to him and embraced her with fervor. 

“ Oh ! how pleasant it is to kiss one’s daughter after a 
squabble, my little girl! There ! mother, do you see ? We 
are quite at one again now. Just go and lock that away, he 
said to Eugenie, as he pointed to the case. “ There ! there ! 
don’t be frightened; I will never say another word to you 
about it.” 

M. Bergerin, who was regarded as the cleverest doctor in 
Saumur, came before very long. He told Grandet plainly 
after the interview that the patient was very seriously ill; 
that any excitement might be fatal to her; that with a light 
diet, perfect tranquillity, and the most constant care, her life 
might possibly be prolonged until the end of the autumn. 

Will it be an expensive illness ? ” asked Grandet. “ Will 
she want a lot of physic ? ” . 

‘^Not much physic, but very careful nursing,” answered 
the doctor, who could not help smiling. 

After all, M. Bergerin, you are a man of honor,” said 
Grandet uneasily. “I can depend upon you, can I not? 
Come and see my wife whenever and as often as you think it 
really necessary. Preserve her life. My good wife—I am 
very fond of her, you see, though I may not show it; it is 
all shut up inside me, and I am one that takes things terribly 
to heart; I am in trouble too. It all began with my brother’s 
death; I am spending, oh !—heaps of money in Paris for 
him—the very eyes out of my head, in fact, and it seems as 
if there were no end to it. Good-day, sir. If you can save 
my wife, save her, even if it takes a hundred or two hundred 
francs.” 

In spite of Grandet’s fervent wishes that his wife might be 
restored to health, for this question of the inheritance was 
like a foretaste of death for him ; in spite of his readiness to 
fulfill the least wishes of the astonished mother and daughter 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


189 


in every possible way ; in spite of Eugenie’s tenderest and most 
devoted care, it was evident that Mine. Grandet’s life was 
rapidly drawing to a close. Day by day she grew weaker, 
and, as often happens at her time of life, she had no strength 
to resist the disease that was wasting her away. She seemed 
to have no more vitality than the autumn leaves; and as the 
sunlight shining through the leaves turns them to gold, so she 
seemed to be transformed by the light of heaven. Her death 
was a fitting close to her life, a death wholly Christian; is 
not that saying that it was sublime ? Her love for her daugh¬ 
ter, her meek virtues, her angelic patience, had never shone 
more brightly than in that month of October, 1822, when she 
passed away. All through her illness she had never uttered 
the slightest complaint, and her spotless soul left earth for 
heaven with but one regret—for the daughter whose sweet 
companionship had been the solace of her dreary life, and for 
whom her dying eyes foresaw troubles and sorrows manifold. 
She trembled at the thought of this lamb, spotless as she her¬ 
self was, left alone in the world among selfish beings who 
sought to despoil her of her fleece, her treasure. 

There is no happiness save in heaven,” she said just be¬ 
fore she died ; ‘‘ you will know that one day, my child.” 

On the morrow after her mother’s death, it seemed to Eu¬ 
genie that she had yet one more reason for clinging fondly to 
the old house where she had been born, and where she had 
found life so hard of late—it became for her the place where 
her mother had died. She could not see the old chair set 
on little blocks of wood, the place by the window where 
her mother used to sit, without shedding tears. Her father 
showed her such tenderness, and took such care of her, that 
she began to think that she had never understood his nature ; 
he used to come to her room and take her down to breakfast 
on his arm, and sit looking at her for v/hole hours with some¬ 
thing almost like kindness in his eyes, with the same brooding 
look that he gave his gold. Indeed, the old cooper almost 


190 


EUGENIE GRANDET 


trembled before his daughter, and was altogether so unlike 
himself, that Nanon and the Cruchotins wondered at these 
signs of weakness, and set it down to his advanced age; they 
began to fear that the old man’s mind was giving way. But 
when the day came on which the family began to wear their 
mourning, M. Cruchot, who alone was in his client’s confi¬ 
dence, was invited to dinner, and these mysteries were ex¬ 
plained. Grandet waited till the table had been cleared, and 
the doors carefully shut. 

Then he began: My dear child you are your mother’s 

heiress, and there are some little matters of business that we 
must settle between us. Is that not so, eh, Cruchot ? ” 

^^Yes.” 

“Is it really pressing; must it be settled to-day, father?” 

“Yes, yes, little girl. I could not endure this suspense any 
longer, and I am sure you would not make things hard for me.” 

“Oh! father-” 

“Well, then, everything must be decided to-night.” 

“ Then what do you want me to do ? ” 

“ Well, little girl, it is not for me to tell you. You tell 
her, Cruchot.” 

“ Mademoiselle, your father wants neither to divide nor to 
sell his property, nor to pay a heavy succession duty upon the 
ready money he may happen to have just now. So if these 
complications are to be avoided, there must be no inventory 
made out, and all the property must remain undivided for the 
present-” 

“Cruchot, are you quite sure of what you are saying that 
you talk in this way before a child ? ” 

“ Let me say what I have to say, Grandet.” 

“Yes, yes, my friend. Neither you nor my daughter would 
plunder me. You would not plunder me, would you, little 
girl?” 

“But what am I to do, M. Cruchot?” asked Eugenie, 
losing patience. 




EUGENIE GRANDET. 


191 


Well,” said the notary, ‘‘you must sign this deed, by 
which you renounce your claims to your mother’s property; 
the property would be secured to you, but your father would 
have the use of it for his life, and there would be no need to 
make a division now.” 

“I understand nothing of all this that you are saying,” 
Eugenie answered; “give me the deed, and show me where I 
am to sign my name.” 

Grandet looked from the document to his daughter, and 
again from his daughter to the document. His agitation was 
so great that he actually wiped several drops of perspiration 
from his forehead. 

“I would much rather you simply waived all claim to your 
poor dear mother’s property, little girl,” he broke in, “in¬ 
stead of signing that deed. It will cost a lot to register it. 
I would rather you renounced your claims and trusted to me 
for the future. I would allow you a good round sum, say a 
hundred francs every month. You could pay for masses then, 

you see; you could have masses said for any one that-Eh? 

A hundred francs (in livres) every month ?” 

“ I will do just as you like, father.” 

“ Mademoiselle,” said the notary, “ it is my duty to point 

out to you that you are robbing yourself without guarantee-” 

Eh I mon Dieu she answered. “What does that 
matter to me ? ” 

“Do be quiet, Cruchot. So it is settled, quite settled ! ” 
cried Grandet, taking his daughter’s hand and striking his 
own into it. “You will not go back from your word, 
Eugenie ? You are a good girl, hein ! ” 

“Oh! father-” 

In his joy he embraced his daughter, almost suffocating her 
as he did so. 

“There! child, you have given fresh life to your father; 
but you are only giving him what he gave you, so we are quits. 
This is how business ought to be conducted, and life is a busi- 




192 


EUGJ^NIE GRANDET. 


ness transaction. Bless you ! You are a good girl, and one 
that really loves her old father. You can do as you like now. 
Then good-bye till to-morrow, Cruchot,” he added, turning 
to the horrified notary. “ You will see that the deed of 
renunciation is properly drawn up'for the clerk of the court." 

By noon next day the declaration was drawn up, and 
Eugenie herself signed away ail her-rights to her heritage. 
Yet a year slipped by, and the cooper had not kept his 
promise, and Eugenie had not received a sou of the monthly 
income which was to have been hers; when Eugeiiie spoke to 
him about it, half-laughingly, he could not help blushing; he 
hurried up to his room, and when he came down again he 
handed her about a third of the jewelry which he had pur¬ 
chased of his nephew. 

“There! child," he said, with a certain sarcastic ring in 
his voice; “will you take these for your Iw'elve hundred 
francs ? " 

“ Oh ! father, really? Will you really give them to me? " 

“You shall have as much next year again," said he, fling¬ 
ing it into her lap; “ and so, before very long, you will have 
all his trinkets," he added, rubbing his hands. He had made 
a very good bargain, thanks to his daughter’s sentiment about 
the jewelry, and was in high good-humor. 

Yet, although the old man was still hale and vigorous, he 
began to see that he must take his daughter into his confi¬ 
dence, and that she must learn to manage his concerns. So 
with this end in view he required her to be present while he 
gave out the daily stores, and for two years he made her re¬ 
ceive the portion of the rent which was paid in kind. Grad¬ 
ually she came to know the names of the vineyards and farms; 
he took her with him when he visited his tenants. By the 
end of the third year he considered the initiation was com¬ 
plete; and, in truth, she had fallen into his ways unquestion- 
ingly, till it had become a matter of habit with her to do as 
her father had done before her. He had no further doubts, 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


193 


gave over the keys of the storeroom into her keeping, and 
installed her as mistress of the house. 

Five years went by in this way, and no event disturbed 
their monotonous existence. Eugenie and her father lived a 
life of methodical routine with the same regularity of move¬ 
ment that characterized the old clock; doing the same things 
at the same hour day after day, year after year. Every one 
knew that there had been a profound sorrow in Mile. Gran- 
det’s life; every circle in Saumur had its theories of this 
secret trouble, and its suspicions as to the state of the heiress’ 
heart, but she never let fall a word that could enlighten any 
one on either point. 

She saw no one but the three Cruchots and a few of their 
friends, who had gradually been admitted as visitors to the 
house. Under their instructions she had mastered the game 
of whist, and they dropped in nearly every evening for a 
rubber. In the year 1827 her father began to feel the infirmi¬ 
ties of age, and was obliged to take her still farther into his 
confidence; she learned the full extent of his landed posses¬ 
sions, and was recommended in all cases of difficulty to refer 
to the notary Cruchot, whose integrity could be depended 
upon. Grandet reached the age of eighty-two, and towards 
the end of the year had a paralytic seizure, from which he 
never rallied. M. Bergerin gave him up, and Eugenie realized 
that very shortly she would be quite alone in the world ; the 
thought drew her more closely to her father; she clung to 
this last link of affection that bound her to another soul. 
Love was all the world for her, as it is for all women who 
love; and Charles had gone out of her world. She nursed 
her father with sublime devotion ; the old man’s intellect had 
grown feeble, but the greed of gold had become an instinct 
which survived his faculties. 

Grandet died as he had lived. Every morning during that 
slow death he had himself wheeled across his room to a place 
beside the fire, whence he could keep the door of his cabinet 
13 


191 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


in view ; on the other side of the door, no doubt, lay his 
hoarded treasures of gold. He sat there, passive and motion¬ 
less ; but if any one entered the room, he would glance un¬ 
easily at the newcomer, and then at the door with its sheath¬ 
ing of iron plates. He would ask the meaning of every 
sound, however faint, and, to the notary’s amazement, the 
old man heard the dog bark in the yard at the back of the 
house. He roused from this apparent stupor at the proper 
hour on the days for receiving his rents and dues, for settling 
accounts with his vine-dressers, and giving receipts. Then 
he shifted his armchair round on its casters, until he faced the 
door of his cabinet, and his daughter was called upon to open 
it, and to put away the little bags of money in neat piles, one 
upon the other. He would watch her until it was all over 
and the door was locked again ; and as soon as she had re¬ 
turned the precious key to him, he would turn round noise¬ 
lessly and take up his old position, putting the key in his 
waistcoat pocket, where he felt for it from time to time. 

His old friend the notary felt sure that it was only a ques¬ 
tion of time, and that Eugenie must of necessity marry his 
nephew the magistrate, unless, indeed, Charles Grandet re¬ 
turned ; so he redoubled his attentions. He came every day 
to take Grandet’s instructions, went at his bidding to Froid- 
fond, to farm and meadow and vineyard ; sold vintages, and 
exchanged all moneys received for gold, which was secretly 
sent to join the piles of bags stored up in the cabinet. 

Then death came up close at last, and the vine-grower’s 
strong frame wrestled with the Destroyer. Even in those 
days he would sit as usual by the fire, facing the door of his 
cabinet. He used to drag off the blankets that they wrapped 
round him, and try to fold them, and say to Nanon, ‘‘ Lock 
that up; lock that up, or they will rob me.” 

So long as he could open his eyes, where the last spark of 
life seemed to linger, they used to turn at once to the door 
of the room where all his treasures lay, and he would say 





i 

I 


I 



K 











i'.Jil''?!-’- f^'^''W(teTO<?/i» 




la/^liai- ■'■ ‘"Z ■■ "'^JimSS** »*; ‘ 




Ik Av 


lES^! 1% 

jtPi'rfff'Bly'’ -^MC 


B 


^ *# 




i< • 1 


i' ? « ' 

•fe *' C /* 


^>*iT J 

If $* 






f?i ^STlf 



t- 


Mb v fWI' ^ f V 

f'B#ra 

^ttlvltfl 

liUVielvfl 

fm ' ■"‘^^j^baiHi 


mh 

k W'' 1 

l'*? 










He would sit for whole hours with his eyes 

ON the Louis. 


FIXED 





p ti 


i^r 


f 




• « 




9 , ' 


' '■ I ^ ... ij , , 




\iu 


■■i‘ 


«• 






-fyu- 



'■ 


I k 


>1 



'I 



; ir 


. A 



»'-i 


V 


|L/; aT)Cv:i -^ir. ■:* j 

^ . ■ -: *^54-,/ “■ ■ ^ f ?■! 


j 1 

r*' tTK ■ • r ‘, ^^iOmIUO^ U n 



*.F 


»/ 


I * I 



$, 


* • 




iM 













i } 


< Mt ’« 








EUGENIE GRANDET. 195 

to his daughter, in tones that seemed to thrill with a panic 
of fear— 

Are they there still? ’ ’ 

“Yes, father.” 

“ Keep watch over the gold !-Let me see the gold,” her 

father would say. 

Then Eugenic used to spread out the louis on a table before 
him, and he would sit for whole hours with his eyes fixed on 
the louis in an unseeing stare, like that of a child who begins 
to see for the first time ; and sometimes a weak imbecile smile, 
painful to see, would steal across his features. 

“ That warms me ! ” he muttered more than once, and his 
face expressed a perfect content. 

When the cure came to administer the sacrament, all the 
life seemed to have died out of the miser’s eyes, but they lit 
up for the first time for many hours at the sight of the silver 
crucifix, the candlesticks, and holy water vessel, all of silver; 
he fixed his gaze on the precious metal, and the wen twitched 
for the last time. 

As the priest held the gilded crucifix above him that the 
image of Christ might be laid to his lips, he made a frightful 
effort to clutch it—a last effort which cost him his life. He 
called to Eugenie, who saw nothing; she was kneeling beside 
him, bathing in tears the hand that was growing cold already. 
“Give me your blessing, father,” she entreated. “ Be very 
careful ! ” the last words came from him ; “ one day you will 
render an account to me of everything here below.” Which 
utterance clearly shows that a miser should adopt Christianity 
as his religion. 

So Eug6nie Grandet was now alone in the world, and 
her house was left to her desolate. There was no one but 
Nanon with whom she could talk over her troubles ; she could 
look into no other eyes and find a response to them ; big 
Nanon was the only human being who loved her for herself. 



196 


EUGENIE GKANDET. 


For Eugenie, Nanon was a providence; she was no longer a 
servant, she was an humble friend. 

M. Cruchot informed Eugenie that she had three Imndred 
thousand livres a year, derived from landed property in and 
around Saumur, besides six millions in the three per cents, 
(invested when the funds were at sixty francs, whereas they 
now stood at seventy-seven), and in ready money two millions 
in gold, and a hundred thousand francs in silver, without 
counting any arrears that were due. Altogether her property 
amounted to about seventeen million francs. 

“ Where can my cousin be? ” she said to herself. 

On the day when M. Cruchot laid these facts before his 
new client, together with the information that the estate was 
now clear and free from all outstanding liabilities, Eugenie 
and Nanon sat on either\ide of the hearth, in the parlor, 
now so empty and so full of memories; everything recalled 
past days, from her mother’s chair set on its wooden blocks to 
the glass tumbler out of which her cousin once drank. 

‘‘Nanon, we are alone, you and I.” 

“Yes, mamselle ; if I only knew where he was, the charm¬ 
ing young gentleman, I would set off on foot to find 
him.’”^’ 

“ The sea lies between us,” said Eugenie. 

While the poor lonely heiress, with her faithful old servant 
for company, was shedding tears in the cold, dark house, 
which was all the world she knew, men talked from Orleans 
to Nantes of nothing but Mile. Grandet and her seventeen 
millions. One of her first acts was to settle a pension of 
twelve hundred francs on Nanon, who, possessing already an 
income of six hundred francs of her own, at once became a 
great match. In less than a month she exchanged her condi¬ 
tion of spinster for that of wife, at the instance and through 
the persuasion of Antoine Cornoiller, who was promoted to 
the position of bailiff and keeper to Mile. Grandet. Mme. 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


197 


Cornoiller had an immense advantage over her contempora¬ 
ries ; her large features had stood the test of time better than 
those of many a comelier woman. She might be fifty-nine 
years of age, but she did not look more than forty; thanks to 
an almost monastic regimen, she possessed rugged health and 
a high color, time seemed to have no effect on her, and per¬ 
haps she had never looked so well in her life as she did on 
her wedding-day. She had the compensating qualities of her 
style of ugliness; she was tall, stout, and strong; her face 
wore an indestructible expression of good-humor, and Cor- 
noiller’s lot seemed an enviable one to many beholders. 

“Fast color,” said the draper. 

“ She might have a family yet,” said the dry-salter ; “ she 
is as well preserved as if she had been kept in brine, asking 
your pardon.” 

“ She is rich; that fellow Cornoiller has done a good day’s 
work,” said another neighbor. 

When Nanon left the old house and went down the crooked 
street on her way to the parish church, she met with nothing 
but congratulations and good-wishes. Nanon was very popular 
with her neighbors. Eugenie gave her three dozen spoons 
and forks as a wedding present. Cornoiller, quite overcome 
with such munificence, spoke of his mistress with tears in his 
eyes; he would have let himself be cut in pieces for her. 
Mme. Cornoiller became Eugenie’s confidential servant; she 
was not only married, and had a husband of her own, her 
dignity was yet further increased, her happiness was doubled. 
She had at last a storeroom and a bunch of keys; she too 
gave out provisions just as her late master used to do. Then 
she had two subordinates—a cook and a waiting-woman, who 
took charge of the house linen and made Mile. Grandet’s 
dresses. As for Cornoiller, he combined the functions of 
forester and steward. It is needless to say that the cook and 
waiting-woman of Nanon’s choosing were real domestic treas¬ 
ures. The tenants scarcely noticed the death of their late 


198 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


landlord ; they were thoroughly broken in to a severe disci- 
pline, and M. and Mme. Cornoiller’s reign was no whit less 
rigorous than that of the old regime. 

Eugenie was a v.^oman of thirty, and as yet had known none 
of the happiness of life. All through her joyless, monotonous 
childhood she had had but one companion, a broken-spirited 
mother, whose sensitive nature had found little but suffering 
in a hard life. That mother had joyfully taken leave of 
existence, pitying the daughter who must still live on in the 
world. Eugenie would never lose the sense of her loss, but 
little of the bitterness of self-reproach mingled with her memo¬ 
ries of her mother. She felt that she had always done a 
daughter’s duty to her mother. 

Love, her first and only love, had been a fresh source of 
suffering for Eugenie. For a few brief days she had seen her 
lover; she had given her heart to him between two stolen 
kisses; then he had left her, and had set the lands and seas 
of the world between them. Her father had cursed her for 
this love ; it had nearly cost her her mother’s life ; it had 
brought her pain and sorrow and a few faint hopes. She had 
striven towards her happiness till her own forces had failed 
her, and another had not come to her aid. 

Our souls live by giving and receiving ; we have need of 
another soul; whatever it gives us we make our own, and 
give back again in overflowing measure. This is as vitally 
necessary for our inner life as breathing is for our corporeal 
existence. Without that wonderful physical process we perish; 
the heart suffers from lack of air, and ceases to beat. Eugenie 
was beginning to suffer. 

She found no solace in her wealth; it could do nothing for 
her; her love, her religion, her faith in the future made up 
all her life. Love was leaching her what eternity meant. 
Her own heart and the Gospel each spoke to her of a life to 
come; life was everlasting, and love no less eternal. Night 
and day she dwelt with these two infinite thoughts, perhaps 


EbGENIE GRANDET. 


199 


for her they were but one. She withdrew more and more 
into herself; she loved, and believed that she was loved. 

For seven years her passion had wholly engrossed her. 

Her treasures were not those millions left to her by her 
father, the money that went on accumulating year after year; 
but the two portraits which hung above her bed, Charles’ 
leather case, the jewels which she had bouglit back from her 
father, and which were now proudly set forth on a layer of 
cotton wool inside the drawer in the old chest, and her aunt’s 
thimble which Mine. Grandet had used; everyday Eugenie 
took up a piece of embroidery, a sort of Penelope’s web, which 
she had only begun that she might wear the golden thimble, 
endeared to her by so many memories. 

It seemed hardly probable that Mile. Grandet would marry 
while she still wore mourning. Her sincere piety was well 
known. So the Cruchot family, counseled by the astute old 
Abbd, was fain to be content with surrounding the heire.ss 
with the most affectionate attentions. Her dining-room was 
filled every evening with the warmest and most devoted 
Cruchotins, who endeavored to surpass each other in singing 
the praises of the mistress of the house in every key. She 
had her physician-in-ordinary, her grand almoner, her cham¬ 
berlain, her mistress of the robes, her prime minister, and 
last, but by no means least, her chancellor—a chancellor 
whose aim it was to keep her informed of everything. If the 
heiress had expressed any wish for a train -bearer, they would 
have found one for her. She was a queen, in fact, and never 
was queen so adroitly flattered. A great soul never stoops to 
flattery; it is the resource of little natures, who succeed in 
making themselves smaller still, that they may the better creep 
into the hearts of those about whom they circle. Flattery, 
by its very nature, implies an interested motive. So the 
people who filled Mile. Grandet’s sitting-room every evening 
(they addressed her and spoke of her among themselves as 
Mile, de Froidfond now) heaped their praises upon their 


200 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


hostess in a manner truly marvelous. This chorus of praise 
embarrassed Eugenie at first; but however gross the flattery 
might be, she became accustomed to hear her beauty extolled, 
and if some newcomer had considered her to be plain, she 
certainly would have winced more under the criticism than 
she might have done eight years ago. She came at last to 
welcome their homage, which in her secret heart she laid at 
the feet of her idol. So also, by degrees, she accepted the 
position, and allowed herself to be treated as a queen, and 
saw her little court full every evening, 

M. le President de Bonfons was the hero of the circle; they 
lauded his talents, his personal appearance, his learning, his 
amiability; he was an inexhaustible subject of admiring com¬ 
ment. Such an one would call attention to the fact that in 
seven years the magistrate had largely increased his fortune; 
Bonfons had at least ten thousand francs a year; and his 
property, like the lands of all the Cruchots in fact, lay within 
the compass of the heiress’ vast estates. 

“Do you know, mademoiselle,” another courtier would 
remark, “that the Cruchots have forty thousand livres a year 
among them ! ” 

“And they are putting money by,” said Mile, de Gribeau- 
court, an old and trusty Cruchotine. “Quite lately a gentle¬ 
man came from Paris on purpose to offer M. Cruchot two 
hundred thousand francs for his professional connection. If 
he could gain an appointment as justice of the peace, he 
ought to take the offer.” 

“ He means to succeed M. de Bonfons as President, and is 
taking steps to that end,” said Mme. d’Orsonval, “ for M. le 
President will be a councilor, and then a president of a 
court; he is so gifted that he is sure to succeed.” 

“Yes,” said another, ‘‘ he is a very remarkable man. Do 
you not think so, mademoiselle? ” 

“M. le President” had striven to act up to the part he 
wanted to play. He was forty years old, his countenance was 


EUGAmE GRANDET. 


261 


dark and ill-favored, he had, moreover, the wizened look 
which is frequently seen in men of his profession ; but he 
affected the airs of youth, sported a malacca cane, refrained 
from taking snuff in Mile. Grandet’s house, and went thither 
arrayed in a white cravat and a shirt with huge frills, which 
gave him a quaint family resemblance to a turkey-gobbler. 
He called the fair heiress “ our dear Eugenie,” and spoke as 
if he were an intimate friend of the family. In fact, but for 
the number of those assembled, and the substitution of whist 
for loto, and the absence of M. and Mme. Grandet, the 
scene was scarcely changed ; it might almost have been that 
first evening on which this story began. 

The pack was still in pursuit of Eugenie’s millions; it was 
a more numerous pack now ; they gave tongue together, and 
hunted down their prey more systematically. 

If Charles had come back from the far-off Indies, he would 
have found the same motives at work and almost the same 
people. Mme. des Grassins, for whom Eugenie had nothing 
but kindness and pity, still remained to vex the Cruchots. 
Eugenie’s face still shone out against the dark background, 
and Charles (though invisible) reigned there supreme as in 
other days. 

Yet some advance had been made. Eugenie’s birthday 
bouquet was never forgotten by the magistrate. Indeed, it 
had become an institution ; every evening he brought the 
heiress a huge and wonderful bouquet. Mme, Cornoiller 
ostentatiously placed these offerings in a vase, and promptly 
flung them into a corner of the yard as soon as the visitors 
had departed. 

In the early spring Mme. des Grassins made a move, and 
sought to trouble the felicity of the Cruchotins by talking to 
Eugenie of the Marquis de Froidfond, whose ruined fortunes 
might be retrieved if the heiress w'ould return his estate to him 
by a marriage contract. Mme. des Grassins lauded the Mar¬ 
quis and his title to the skies; and, taking Eugenie’s quiet 


202 


eug^:nie grandet. 


smile for consent, she went about saying that M. le President 
Cruchot’s marriage was not such a settled thing as some people 
imagined. 

“ M. de Froidfond may be fifty years old,” she said, but 
he looks no older than M. Cruchot; he is a widower, and has 
a family, it is true ; but he is a marquis, he will be a peer of 
France one of these days, it is not such a bad match as times 
go. I know of my own certain knowledge that when old 
Grandet added his own property to the Froidfond estate he 
meant to graft his family into the Froidfonds. He often told 
me as much. Oh ! he was a shrewd old man, this old man 
Grandet.” 

“Ah! Nanon,” Eugeriie\aid one evening, as she went to 
bed, “why has he not once written to me in seven 
years !-” 

While these events were taking place in Saumur, Charles 
was making his fortune in the East. His first venture was 
very successful. He had promptly realized the sum of six 
thousand dollars. Crossing the line had cured him of many 
early prejudices ; he soon saw very clearly that the best and 
quickest way of making money was the same in the tropics as 
in Europe—by buying and selling men. He made a descent 
on the African coasts and bargained for ^egroes and other 
goods in demand in various markets. He threw himself heart 
and soul into his business, and thought of nothing else. He 
set one clear aim before him, to reappear in Paris, and to 
dazzle tlie world there with his wealth, to attain a position 
even higher than the one from which he had fallen. 

By dint of rubbing shoulders with many men, traveling in 
many lands, coming in contact with various customs and 
religions, his code had been relaxed, and he had grown scep¬ 
tical. His notions of right and wrong became less rigid when 
he found that what was looked upon as a crime in one country 
was held up to admiration in another. He saw that every 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 


203 


one was working for himself, that disinterestedness was rarely 
to be met with, and grew selfish and suspicious ; the hereditary 
failings of the Grandets came out in him—the hardness, the 
shiftiness, and the greed of gain. He sold Chinese coolies, 
Wegro slaves, swallow-nests, children, artists, and anything and 
everything that brought in money. He became a money¬ 
lender on a large scale. Long practice in cheating the custom 
authorities had made him unscrupulous in other ways. He 
would make the voyage to St. Thomas, buy booty of the 
pirates there for a low price, and sell the merchandise in the 
dearest market. 

During his first voyage Eugenie’s pure and noble face had 
been with him, like the image of the Virgin which Spanish 
sailors set on the prows of their vessels \ he had attributed his 
first success to a kind of magical efficacy possessed by her 
prayers and vows; but as time went on, the women of other 
countries, {iegresses, mulattoes, white skins, and yellow skins, 
orgies and adventures in many lands, completely effaced all 
recollection of his cousin, of Saumur, of the old house, of 
the bench, and of the kiss that he had snatched in the passage. 
He remembered nothing but the little garden shut in by its 
crumbling walls where he had learned the fate that lay in store 
for him ; but he rejected all connection with the family. His 
uncle was an old fox who had filched his jewels. Eugenie 
had no place in his heart, he never gave her a thought; but 
she occupied a page in his ledger as a creditor for six thou¬ 
sand francs. 

Such conduct and such ideas explained Charles Grandet’s 
silence. In the East Indies, at St. Thomas, on the coast of 
Africa, at Lisbon, in the United States, Charles Grandet the 
adventurer was known as Carl Sepherd, a pseudonym which 
he assumed so as not to compromise his real name. Carl 
Sepherd could be indefatigable, brazen, and greedy of gain; 
could conduct himself, in short, like a man who resolves to 
make a fortune quibuscumque viis, and makes haste to have 


204 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


done with villainy as soon as possible, in order to live re* 
spected for the rest of his days. 

With such methods his career of prosperity was rapid and 
brilliant, and in 1827 he returned to Bordeaux on board the 
Marie Caroline, a fine brig belonging to a Royalist firm. He 
had nineteen hundred thousand francs with him in gold dust, 
carefully secreted in three strong casks ; he hoped to sell it to 
the Paris mint, and to make eight percent, on the transaction. 
There was also on board the brig a gentleman-in-ordinary to 
his majesty Charles X., a M. d’Aubrion, a worthy old man 
who had been rash enough to marry a woman of fashion whose 
money came from estates in the West India Islands. Mme. 
d’Aubrion’s reckless extravagance had obliged him to go out 
to the Indies to sell her property. M. and Mme. d’Aubrion, 
of the house of d’Aubrion de Buch, which had lost its captal 
or chieftain just before the Revolution, were now in straitened 
circumstances. They had a bare twenty thousand francs of 
income and a daughter, a very plain girl, whom her mother 
made up her mind to marry without a dowry; for life in 
Paris is expensive, and, as has been seen, their means were 
reduced. It was an enterprise the success of which might 
have seemed somewhat problematical to a man of the world, 
in spite of the cleverness with which a woman of fashion is 
generally credited. Perhaps even Mme. d’Aubrion herself, 
when she looked at her daughter, was almost ready to despair 
of getting rid of her to any one, even to the most besotted 
worshiper of rank and titles. 

Mile. d’Aubrion was a tall, spare demoiselle, somewhat like 
her namesake the insect; she had a disdainful mouth, over¬ 
shadowed by a long nose, thick at the tip, sallow in its normal 
condition, but very red after a meal, an organic change which 
was all the more unpleasant by reason of contrast with a 
pallid, insipid countenance. From some points of view she 
was all that a worldly mother, who was thirty-eight years of 
age, and had still some pretensions to beauty, could desire. 


EUGENIE GRANDET, 


205 


But by way of compensating advantages, the Marquise 
d’Aubrion’s distinguished air had been inherited by her 
daughter, and that young lady had been submitted to a 
Spartan regimen, which for the time being subdued the offend¬ 
ing hue in her feature to a reasonable flesh-tint. Her mother 
had taught her how to dress herself. Under the same in¬ 
structor she had acquired a charming manner, and had learned 
to assume that pensive expression which interests a man and 
leads him to imagine that here, surely, is the angel for whom 
he has hitherto sought in vain. She was carefully drilled in a 
certain manoeuvre with her foot—to let it peep forth from 
beneath her petticoat, and so call attention to its small size— 
whenever her nose became unseasonably red; indeed, the 
mother had made the very best of her daughter. By means of 
large sleeves, stiff skirts, puffs, padding, and high-pressure 
corsets she had produced a highly curious and interesting 
result, a specimen of femininity which ought to have been 
put into a museum for the edification of mothers generally. 

Charles became very intimate with Mme. d’Aubrion ; the 
lady had her owm reasons for encouraging him. People said 
that during the time on board she left no stone unturned to 
secure such a prize for a son-in-law. It is at any rate certain 
that when they landed at Bordeaux Charles stayed in the same 
hotel with M., Mme., and Mile. d’Aubrion, and they all 
traveled together to Paris. The hotel d’Aubrion was ham¬ 
pered with mortgages, and Charles was intended to come to 
the rescue. The mother had gone so far as to say that it 
would give her great pleasure to establish a son-in-law on the 
ground floor. She did not share M. d’Aubrion’s aristocratic 
prejudices, and promised Charles Grandet to obtain letters 
patent from that easy-tempered monarch, Charles X., which 
should authorize him, Grandet, to bear the name and assume 
the arms of the d’Aubrions, and (by purchasing the entail) to 
succeed to the property of Aubrion, which was worth about 
thirty-six thousand livres a year, to say notliing of the titles 


206 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


of Captal de Buch and Marquis d’Aubrion. They could be 
very useful to each other, in short; and what with this arrange¬ 
ment of a joint establishment, and one or two posts about the 
Court, the hotel d’Aubrion might count upon an income of a 
hundred thousand francs and more. 

‘‘And when a man has a hundred thousand francs a year, 
a name, a family, and a position at Court—for I shall procure 
an appointment for you as gentleman-of-the-bedchamber— 
the rest is easy. You can be anything you choose ” (so she 
instructed Charles), “ Master of Requests in the Council of 
State, Prefect, Secretary to an Embassy, the Ambassador him¬ 
self if you like. Charles X. is much attached to d’Aubrion ; 
they have known each other from childhood.” 

She fairly turned his head with these ambitious schemes, 
and during the voyage Charles began to cherish the hopes and 
ideas which had been so cleverly insinuated in the form of 
tender confidences. He never doubted but that his uncle had 
paid his father’s creditors; he had been suddenly launched 
into the society of the Faubourg St. Germain, at that time 
the goal of social ambition; and beneath the shadow of Mile. 
Mathilde’s purple nose, he was shortly to appear as the Comte 
d’Aubrion, very much as the Dreux shone forth transformed 
into Brezes. He was dazzled by the apparent prosperity of the 
restored dynasty, which had seemed to be tottering to its fall 
when he left France ; his head was full of wild ambitious 
dreams, which began on the voyage, and did not leave him in 
Paris. He resolved to strain every nerve to reach those pinna¬ 
cles of glory which his egotistical would-be mother-in-law 
had pointed out to him. His cousin was only a dim speck in 
the remote past; she had no place in this brilliant future, no 
part in his dreams, but he went to see Annette. That experi¬ 
enced woman of the world gave counsel to her old friend; he 
must by no means let slip such an opportunity for an alliance; 
she promised to aid him in all his schemes of advancement. 
In her heart she was delighted to see Charles thus secured to 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


207 


such a plain and uninteresting girl. He had grown very 
attractive during his stay in the Indies; his complexion had 
grown darker, he had gained in manliness and self-possession; 
he spoke in the firm, decided tones of a man who is used to 
command and to success. Ever since Charles Grandet had 
discovered that there was a definite part for him to play in 
Paris, he was himself at once. 

Des Grassins, hearing of his return, his approaching mar¬ 
riage, and his large fortune, came to see him, and spoke of the 
three hundred thousand francs still ov*^ing to his father’s cred¬ 
itors. He found Charles closeted with a goldsmith, from 
whom he had ordered jewels for Mile. d’Aubrion’s present, 
and who was submitting designs. Charles himself had brought 
magnificent diamonds from the Indies ; but the cost of setting 
them, together with the silver plate and jewelry of the new 
establishment, amounted to more than two hundred thousand 
francs. He did not recognize des Grassins at first, and treated 
him with the cool insolence of a young man of fiishion who 
is conscious that he has killed four men in as many duels in the 
Indies. As M. des Grassins had already called three or four 
times, Charles vouchsafed to hear him, but it was with bare 
politeness, and he did not pay the slightest attention to what 
the banker said. 

“ My father’s debts are not mine,” he said coolly. “ I am 
obliged to you, sir, for the trouble you have been good enough 
to take, but I am none the better for it that I can see. I have 
not scraped together a couple of millions, earned with the 
sweat of my brow, to fling it to my father’s creditors at this 
late day.” 

“But suppose that your father were to be declared bankrupt 
in a few days’ time ? ” 

“In a few days’ time I shall be the Comte d’Aubrion, 
sir; so you can see that it is a matter of entire indiffer¬ 
ence to me. Besides, you know even better than I do that 
when a man has a hundred thousand livres a year, his 


208 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


father never has been a bankrupt,” and he politely edged 
the deputy des Grassins to the door. 

In the early days of the month of August, in that same 
year, Eugenie was sitting on the little bench in the garden 
where her cousin had sworn eternal love, and where she 
often took breakfast in summer mornings. The poor girl 
was almost happy for a few brief moments; she went over 
all the great and little events of her love before those catas¬ 
trophes that followed. The morning was fresh and bright, 
and the garden was full of sunlight; her eyes wandered 
over the wall with its moss and flow'ers; it was full of 
cracks now, and all but in ruins, but no one was allowed to 
touch it, though Cornoiller was always prophesying to his 
wife that the w'hole thing would come down and crush some¬ 
body or other one of these days. The postman knocked 
at the door, and gave a letter into the hands of Mine. Cor¬ 
noiller, who hurried into the garden, crying, “ Mademoiselle ! 
A letter! Is it the letter?” she added, as she handed it to 
her mistress. 

The words rang through Eugenie’s heart as the spoken 
sounds rang from the ramparts and the old garden wall. 

“Paris!-It is his writing ! Then he has come back.” 

Eugenie’s face grew wdiite ; for several seconds she kept the 
seal unbroken, for her heart beat so fast that she could neither 
move nor see. Big Nanon stood and waited with both hands 
on her hips ; joy seemed to puff like smoke from every wrin¬ 
kle in her brown face. 

“ Do read it, mademoiselle ! ” 

“ Oh ! why does he come back by way of Paris, Nanon, 
when he went by way of Saumur? ” 

“ Read it; the letter will tell you why.” 

Eugenie’s fingers trembled as she opened the envelope; a 
check on the firm of “ Mme. des Grassins et Corret, Saumur,”' 
fell out of it and fluttered down. Nanon picked it up. 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 


209 


“My dear Cousin-” 

(“I am not ‘Eugenie’ now,” she thought, and her heart 
stood still.) “ You-” 

“ He used to say thou She folded her arms and dreaded 
to read any further ; great tears gathered in her eyes. 

“ What is it ? Is he dead ? ” asked Nanon. 

“ If he were, he could not write,” said Eugenie, and she 
read the letter through. It ran as follows : 

“ My dear Cousin ;—You will, I am sure, hear with pleasure 
of the success of my enterprise. You brought me luck; I 
have come back to France a wealthy man, as my uncle advised. 
I have just heard of his death, together with that of my aunt, 
from M. des Grassins. Our parents must die in the course of 
nature, and we ourselves must follow them. I hope that by 
this time you are consoled for your loss ; time cures all trouble, 
as I know by experience. Yes, my dear cousin, the day of 
illusions has gone by for me. I am sorry, but it cannot be 
helped. I have knocked about the world so much, and seen 
so much, that I have been led to reflect on life. I was a child 
when I went away; I have come back a man, and I have 
many things to think about now which I did not even dream 
of then. You are free, my cousin, and I too am free still; 
there is apparently nothing to hinder the realization of our 
youthful hopes, but I am too straightforward to hide my pres¬ 
ent situation from you. I have not for a moment forgotten 
that I am bound to you; through all my wanderings I have 
always remembered the little wooden bench-” 

Eugenie started up as if she were sitting on burning coals, 
and sat down on one of the broken stone steps in the 
yard. 

—“ the little wooden bench where we vowed to love each 
other for ever; the passage, the gray parlor, my attic room, 
14 





210 


EUGilNlE GRANDET. 


the night when in your thoughtfulness and tact you made my 
future easier to me. Yes, these memories have been my sup¬ 
port ; I have said in my heart that you were always thinking 
of me when I thought of you at the hour we had agreed upon. 
Did you not look out into the darkness at nine o’clock? Yes, 
I am sure you did. I would not prove false to so sacred a friend¬ 
ship; I cannot deal insincerely with you. 

marriage has been proposed to me, which is in every 
way satisfactory to my mind. Love in a marriage is romantic 
nonsense. Experience has clearly shown me that in marrying 
we must obey social laws and conform to conventional ideas. 
There is some difference of age between you and me, which 
would perhaps be more likely to affect your future than mine, 
and there are other differences of which I peed not speak; 
your bringing up, your ways of life, and your tastes have not 
fitted you for Parisian life, nor would they harmonize with 
the future which I have marked out for myself. For instance, 
it is a part of my plan to maintain a great household, and to 
see a good deal of society; and you, I am sure, from my 
recollections of you, would prefer a quiet, domestic life and 
home-keeping ways. No, I will be open with you; I will 
abide by your decision; but I must first, however, lay all 
the facts of the case before you, that you may the better 
judge. 

I possess at the time of writing an income of eighty thou¬ 
sand livres. With this fortune I am able to marry into the 
d’Aubrion family; I should take their name on my marriage 
with their only daughter, a girl of nineteen, and secure at the 
same time a very brilliant position in society, and the post of 
gentleman-of-the-bedchamber. I will assure you at once, my 
dear cousin, that I have not the slightest affection for Mile. 
d’Aubrion, but by this marriage I shall secure for my children 
a social rank which will be of inestimable value in the future. 
Monarchical principles are daily gaining ground. A few years 
hence my son, the Marquis d’Aubrion, would have an entailed 


E[/GAn/E grandet. 


211 


estate and a yearly rental of forty thousand livres ; with such 
advantages there would be no position to which he might not 
aspire. We ought to live for our children. 

‘‘You see, my cousin, how candidly I am laying the state 
of my heart, my hopes, and my fortunes before you. Perhaps 
after seven years of separation you may yourself have forgotten 
our childish love affair, but I have never forgotten your good¬ 
ness or my promise. A less conscientious, a less upright man, 
with a heart less youthful than mine, might scarcely feel him¬ 
self bound by it; but for me a promise, however lightly given, 
is sacred. When I tell you plainly that my marriage is solely 
a marriage of suitability, and that I have not forgotten the 
love of our youthful days, am I not putting myself entirely 
into your hands, and making you the arbitress of my fate? 
Is it not implied that if I must renounce my social ambitions, 
I shall willingly content myself with the simple and pure hap¬ 
piness which is always called up by the thought of you-” 

“ Tra-la-la-tan-ta-ti! ” sang Charles Grandet to the air of 
Non piu andraiy as he signed himself, 

“Your demoted cousin, 

“ Charles.” 

“By Jove ! that is acting handsomely,” he said to himself. 
He looked about him for the cheque, slipped it in, and added 
a postscript. 

P.S .—I enclose a cheque on Mme. des Grassins for eight 
thousand francs, payable in gold to your order, comprising 
the capital and interest of the sum you were so kind to ad¬ 
vance me. I am expecting a case from Bordeaux which con¬ 
tains a few things which you must allow me to send you as a 
token of my unceasing gratitude. You can send my dressing- 
case by the diligence to the Hotel d’Aubrion, Rue Hillerin- 
Bertin.” 


212 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


By the diligence I ” cried Eugenie, “ when I would have 
given my life for it a thousand times ! ” 

Terrible and complete shipwreck of hope; the vessel had 
gone down, there was not a spar, not a plank in the vast ocean. 
There are women who when their lover forsakes them will 
drag him from a rival’s arms and murder her, and fly for 
refuge to the ends of the earth, to the scaffold, or the grave. 
There is a certain grandeur in this no doubt; there is some¬ 
thing so sublime in the passion of indignation which prompts 
the crime, that man’s justice is awed into silence ; but there 
are other women who suffer and bow their heads. They go 
on their way, submissive and broken-hearted, weeping and 
forgiving, praying till their last sigh for him whom they never 
forget. And this no less is love, love such as the angels 
know, love that bears itself proudly in anguish, that lives 
by the secret pain of which it dies at last. This was to be 
Eugenie’s love now that she had read that horrible letter. 

She raised her eyes to the sky and thought of her mother’s 
prophetic words, uttered in the moment of clear vision that is 
sometimes given to dying eyes; and as she thought of her 
mother’s life and death, it seemed to her that she was looking 
out over her own future. There w'as nothing left to her now 
but to live prayerfully till the day of her deliverance should 
come and the soul spread its wings for heaven. 

‘^My mother was right,” she said, weeping. Suffer—and 

die.” 

She went slowly from the garden into the house, avoiding 
the passage; but when she came into the old gray parlor, it 
was full of memories of her cousin. On the chimney-piece 
there stood a certain china saucer, which she used every 
morning, and the old Sevres sugar basin. 

It was to be a memorable and eventful day for Eugenie. 
Nanon announced the cure of the parish church. He was 
related to the Cruchots, and therefore in the interests of the 
President de Bonfons. For some days past the Abb6 had 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


213 


urged the cure to speak seriously to Mile. Grandet about the 
duty of marriage from a religious point of view for a woman 
in her position. Eugenie, seeing her pastor, fancied that he 
had come for the thousand francs which she gave him every 
month for the poor of his parish, and sent Nanon for the 
money; but the curate began with a smile, “To-day, mademoi¬ 
selle, I have come to take counsel with you about a poor girl 
in whom all Saumur takes an interest, and who, through lack 
of charity to herself, is not living as a Christian should.” 

Mon Dieu / M. le Cure, just now I can think of nobody but 
myself. I am very miserable, my only refuge is in the Church; 
her heart is large enough to hold all human sorrows, her love 
so inexhaustible that we need never fear to drain it dry.” 

“Well, mademoiselle, when we speak of this girl, we shall 
sj)eak of you. Listen ! If you would fain work out your 
salvation, there are but two ways open to you : you must either 
leave the world or live in the world and submit to its laws 
—you must choose between the earthly and the heavenly 
vocation.” 

“ Ah ! your voice speaks to me when I need to hear a voice. 
Yes, God has sent you to me. I will bid the world farewell, 
and live for God alone, in silence and seclusion.” 

“But, my daughter, you should think long and prayerfully 
before taking so strong a measure. Marriage is life ; the veil 
and the convent is death.” 

“ Yes, death. Ah! if death would only come quickly, 
M. le Cure,” she said, with dreadful eagerness. 

“Death ? But you have great obligations to fulfill towards 
society, mademoiselle. There is your family of poor, to whom 
you give clothes and firing in winter and work in summer. 
Your great fortune is a loan, of which you must give account 
one day. You have always looked on it as a sacred trust. It 
would be selfish to bury yourself in a convent, and you ought 
not to live alone in the world. In the first place, how can 
you endure the burden of your vast fortune alone? You 


214 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


might lose it. You will be involved in endless litigation; 
you will find yourself in difficulties from which you will not 
be able to extricate yourself. Take your pastor’s word, a 
husband is useful; you ought not to lose what God has given 
into your charge. I speak to you as to a cherished lamb of 
my flock. You love God too sincerely to find hindrances to 
your salvation in the world; you are one of its fairest orna¬ 
ments, and should remain in it as an example of holiness.” 

At this point Mme. des Grassins was announced. The 
banker’s wife was smarting under a grievous disappointment, 
and thirsted for revenge. 

“Mademoiselle-” she began. Oh ! M. le Cure is 

here- 1 will say no more then. I came to speak about 

some matters of business, but I see you are deep in something 
else.” 

“ Madame,” said the cure, “ I leave the field to you.” 

“ Oh ! M. le Cure, pray come back again ; I stand in great 
need of your help just now.” 

“ Yes, indeed, my poor child ! ” said Mme. des Grassins. 

“ What do you mean ? ” asked Eugenie and the cur6 both 
together. 

“ Do you suppose that I haven’t heard that your cousin has 
come back, and is going to marry Mile. d’Aubrion ? A 
woman doesn’t go about with her wits in her pocket.” 

Eugenie was silent, there was a red flush on her face, but 
she made up her mind at once that henceforward no one 
should learn anything from her, and looked as impenetrable 
as her father used to do. 

“Well, madame,” she said, with a tinge of bitterness in 
her tones, “ it seems that I, at any rate, carry my wits in my 
pocket, for I am quite at a loss to understand you. Speak 
out and explain yourself; you can speak freely before M. le 
Cure, he is my director, as you know.” 

“ Well, then, mademoiselle, see for yourself what des Gras¬ 
sins says, Here is the letter,” 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 


215 


Eugenie read : 

“ My dear Wife :—Charles Grandet has returned from the 
Indies, and has been in Paris these two months-’’ 

“Two months! ” said Eugenie to herself, and her hand 
fell to her side. After a moment she went on reading: 

“ I had to dance attendance on him, and called twice be¬ 
fore the future Comte d’Aubrion would condescend to see me. 
All Paris is talking about his marriage, and the banns are 
published-” 

“And he wrote to me after that?” Eugenie said to her¬ 
self. She did not round off the sentence as a Parisienne 
would have done, with “Wretch that he is ! ” but her scorn 
was not one whit the less because it was unexpressed. 

—“ but it will be a good while yet before he marries ; it is not 
likely that the Marquis d’Aubrion will give his daughter to the 
son of a bankrupt wine merchant. I called and told him of 
all the trouble we had been at, his uncle and I, in the matter 
of his father’s failure, and of our clever dodges that had kept 
the creditors quiet so far. The insolent puppy had the effron¬ 
tery to say to me—to who for five years have toiled day 

and night in his interest and to save his credit—that his 
father's affairs were not his ! A solicito*- would have wanted 
thirty or forty thousand francs of him in fees at the rate of 
one per cent, on the total of the debt I But, patience ! 
There is something that he does owe, however, and that the 
law shall make him pay, that is to say, twelve hundred thou¬ 
sand francs to his father’s creditors, and I shall declare his 
father bankrupt. I mixed myself up in this affair on the word 
of that old crocodile of a Grandet, and I have given promises 
in the name of the family. M. le Comte d’Aubrion may not 
qare for his honor, but I cure u goodi deal for tnine 1 So I 




216 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


shall just explain my position to the creditors. Still, I have 
too much respect for Mile. Eugenie (with whom, in happier 
days, we hoped to be more closely connected) to take any 
steps before you have spoken to her-” 

There Eugenie paused, and quietly returned the letter. 

am obliged to you,” she said to Mme. des Grassins. 
‘‘ We shall see -” 

Your voice was exactly like your father’s just then,” ex¬ 
claimed Mme. des Grassins. 

Madame,” put in Nanon, producing Charles’ cheque, 
*‘you have eight thousand francs to pay us.” 

“True. Be so good as to come with me, Mme. Cor- 
noiller.” 

“ M. le Cure,” said Eugenie, with a noble composure that 
came of the thought which prompted her, “ would it be a sin 
to remain in a state of virginity after marriage ? ” 

“ It is a case of conscience which I cannot solve. If you 
care to know what the celebrated Sanchez says in his great 
work, De Matrlmonio, I could inform you to-morrow.” 

The cure took leave. Mile. Grandet went up to her 
father’s room and spent the day there by herself; she would 
not even come down to dinner, though Nanon begged and 
scolded. She appeared in the evening at the hour when the 
usual company began to arrive. The gray parlor in the 
Grandet’s house had never been so well filled as it was that 
night. Every soul in the town knew by that time of Charles’ 
return, and of his faithlessness and ingratitude; but their 
inquisitive curiosity was not to be gratified. Eugenie was a 
little late, but no one saw any traces of the cruel agitation 
through which she had passed ; she could smile benignly in 
reply to the compassionate looks and words which some of 
the group thought fit to bestow on her; she bore her pain 
behind a mask of politeness. 

About nine o’clock the card-players drew away from the 



EUGENIE GRANDET. 


217 


tables, paid their losses, and criticised the game and the vari¬ 
ous points that had been made. Just as there was a general 
move in the direction of the door, an unexpected develop¬ 
ment took place; the news of it rang through Saumur and 
four prefectures round about for days after. 

“Please stay, M. le President." 

There was not a person in the room who did not thrill with 
excitement at the words; M. de Bonfons, who was about to 
take his cane, turned quite white, and sat down again. 

“The President takes the millions," said Mile, de 
Gribeaucourt. 

“It is quite clear that President de Bonfons is going to 
marry Mile. Grandet," cried Mme. d’Orsonval. 

“ The best trick of the game ! " commented the Abbe. 

“A very pretty rArw," said the notary. 

Every one said his say and cut his joke, every one thought 
of the heiress mounted upon her millions as if she were on a 
pedestal. Here was the catastrophe of the drama, begun 
nine years ago, taking place under their eyes. To tell the 
President in the face of all Saumur to “ stay " was as good as 
announcing at once that she meant to take the magistrate for 
her husband. Social conventionalities are rigidly observed in 
little country towns, and such an infraction as this was looked 
upon as a binding promise. 

“ M. le President," Eugenie began in an unsteady voice, 
as soon as they were alone, “ I know what you care about in 
me. Swear to leave me free till the end of my life, to claim 
none of the rights which marriage will give you over me, and 
my hand is yours. Oh ! " she said, seeing him about to fall 
on his knees, “ I have not finished yet. I must tell you 
frankly that there are memories in my heart which can never 
be effaced; that friendship is all that I can give my husband ; 
I wish neither to affront him nor to be disloyal to my own 
heart. But you shall only have my hand and fortune at the 
price of an immense service which I want you to do me." 

II 


218 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


‘‘Anything, I will do anything,” said the president. 

“ Here are fifteen hundred thousand francs, M. le Presi¬ 
dent,” she said, drawing from her bodice a certificate for a 
hundred shares in the Bank of France; “will you set out for 
Paris? You must not even wait till the morning, but go at 
once, to-night. You must go straight to M. des Grassins, ask 
him for a list of my uncle’s creditors, call them together, and 
discharge all outstanding claims upon Guillaume Grandet’s 
estate. Let the creditors have capital and interest at five per 
cent, from the day the debts were contracted to the present 
time; and see that in every case a receipt in full is given, and 
that it is made out in proper form. You are a magistrate, 
you are the only person whom I feel that I can trust in such a 
case. You are a gentleman and a man of honor; you have 
given me your word, and, protected by your name, I will 
make the perilous voyage of life. We shall know how to 
make allowances for each other, for we have been acquainted 
for so long that it is almost as if we were related, and I am 
sure you would not wish to make me unhappy.” 

The president fell on his knees at the feet of the rich heiress 
in a paroxysm of joy. 

“ I will be your slave ! ” he said. 

“When all the receipts are in your possession, sir,” she 
went on, looking quietly at him, “ )^ou must take them, to¬ 
gether with the bills, to my cousin Grandet, and give them 
to him with this letter. When you come back, I will keep 
my word.” 

The president understood the state of affairs perfectly well. 
“She is accepting me out of pique,” he thought, and he 
hastened to do Mile. Grandet’s bidding with all possible speed, 
for fear some chance might bring about a reconciliation be¬ 
tween the lovers. 

As soon as M. de Bonfons left her, Eugenie sank into her 
chair and burst into tears. All was over, and this was the 
end. 


EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


219 


The president traveled post-haste to Paris and reached his 
journey’s end on the following evening. The next morning 
he went to des Grassins, and arranged for a meeting of the 
creditors in the office of the notary with whom the bills had 
been deposited. Every man of them appeared, every man of 
them was punctual to a moment—one should give even cred¬ 
itors their dues. 

M. de Bonfons, in Mile. Grandet’s name, paid down the 
money in full, both capital and interest. They were paid in¬ 
terest ! It was an amazing portent, a nine days’ wonder in 
the business world of Paris. After the whole affair had been 
wound up, and when, by Eugenie’s desire, des Grassins had 
received fifty thousand francs for his services, the president 
betook himself to the Hotel d’Aubrion, and was lucky enough 
to find Charles at home, and in disgrace with his future father- 
in-law. The old Marquis had just informed that gentleman 
that until Guillaume Grandet’s creditors were satisfied, a mar¬ 
riage with his daughter was not to be thought of. 

To Charles, thus despondent, the president delivered the 
following letter: 

‘‘ Dear Cousin: —M. le President de Bonfons has under¬ 
taken to hand you a discharge of all claims against my uncle’s 
estate, and to deliver it in person, together with this letter, so 
that I may know that it is safely in your hands. I heard 
rumors of bankruptcy, and it occurred to me that difficulties 
might possibly arise as a consequence in the matter of your 
marriage with Mile. d’Aubrion. Yes, cousin, you are quite 
right about my tastes and manners; I have lived, as you say, 
so entirely out of the world that I know nothing of its ways 
or its calculations, and my companionship could never make 
up to you for the loss of the pleasures that you look to find in 
society. I hope that you will be happy according to the social 
conventions to which you have sacrificed our early love. The 
only thing in my power to give you to complete your happi- 


220 


EUGENIE GRANDEE 


ness is your father’s good name. Farewell; you will always 
find a faithful friend in your cousin, Eugenie.” 

In spite of himself an exclamation broke from the man of 
social ambitions when his eyes fell on the discharge and re¬ 
ceipts. The president smiled. 

‘‘We can each announce our marriage,” said he. 

“Oh! you are to marry Eugenie, are you? Well, I am 
glad to hear it; she is a kind-hearted girl. Why ! ” struck 
with a sudden luminous idea, “she must be rich ? ” 

“Four days ago she had about nineteen millions,” the 
president said, with a malicious twinkle in his eyes; “ to-day 
she has only seventeen.” 

Charles was dumfounded ; he stared at the president. 

“Seventeen mil-” 

“ .Seventeen millions. Yes, sir; when we are married. 
Mile. Grandet and I shall muster seven hundred and fifty 
thousand livres a year between us.” 

“ My dear cousin,” said Charles, with some return of assur¬ 
ance, “ we shall be able to push each other’s fortunes.” 

“ Certainly,” said the president. “ There is something else 
here,” he added, “ a little case that I was to give only in your 
hands,” and he set down a box containing the dressing-case 
upon the table. 

The door opened, and in came Mme. la Marquise d’Au- 
brion ; the great lady seemed to be unaware of Cruchot’s 
existence. “ Look here ! dear,” she said, “ never mind what 
that absurd M. d’Aubrion has been saying to you; the Duch- 
esse de Chaulieu has quite turned his head. I repeat it, there 
is nothing to prevent your marriage-” 

“Nothing, madame,” answered Charles. “The three 
millions which my father owed were paid yesterday.” 

“ In money ? ” she asked. 

“In full, capital and interest; I mean to rehabilitate his 
memory, ’ ’ 




EUG&NIE GRANDET. 


221 


“What nonsense!” cried Mme. la Marquise d’Aubrion. 
“Who is this person?” she asked in Charles’ ear, as she 
saw Cruchot for the first time. 

“ My man of business,” he answered in a low voice. The 
Marquise gave M. de Bonfons a disdainful bow, and left the 
room. 

“ We are beginning to push each other’s fortunes already,” 
said the president dryly, as he took up his hat. “ Good-day, 
cousin.” 

“ The old cockatoo from Saumur is laughing at me; I have 
a great mind to make him swallow six inches of cold steel,” 
thought Charles. 

But the president had departed. 

Three days later M. de Bonfons was back in Saumur again, 
and announced his marriage with Eugenie. After about six 
months he received his appointment as Councilor to the 
Court-Royal at Angers, and they went thither. But before 
Eugenie left Saumur she melted down the trinkets that had 
long been so sacred and so dear a trust, and gave them, to¬ 
gether with the eight thousand francs which her cousin had 
returned to her, to make a reredos for the altar in the parish 
church whither she had gone so often to pray to God for him. 
Henceforward her life was spent partly at Angers, partly at 
Saumur. Her husband’s devotion to the government at a 
political crisis was rewarded; he was made President of the 
Chamber, and finally First President. Then he awaited a 
general election with impatience ; he had visions of a place in 
the government; he had dreams of a peerage; and then, and 
then- 

“Then he would call cousins with the king, I suppose?” 
said Nanon, big Nanon, Mme. Cornoiller, wife of a burgess 
of Saumur, when her mistress told her of these lofty ambitions 
and high destinies. 

Yet, after all, none of these ambitious dreams were to be real- 



222 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


ized, and the name of M. de Bonfons (he had finally dropped 
the patronymic Cruchot) was to undergo no further transforma¬ 
tion. He died only eight days after his appointment as 
deputy of Saumur. God, who sees all hearts, and who never 
strikes without cause, punished him, doubtless, for his pre¬ 
sumptuous schemes, and for the lawyer’s cunning with which, 
accurante Cruchot, he drafted his own marriage contract; in 
which husband and wife, in case there was no issue of the mar¬ 
riage, bequeathed to each other all their property, both real estate 
and personalty, without exception or reservation, dispensing even 
with the formality of an inventory, provided that the omission of 
the said inventory should not injure their heirs and assigns, it 
being understood that this deed of gift, etc., etc., a clause which 
may throw some light on the profound respect with which 
the president constantly showed for his wife’s desire to live 
apart. Women cited M. le Premier President as one of the 
most delicately considerate of men, and pitied him, and often 
went so far as to blame Eugenie for clinging to her passion 
and her sorrow; mingling, according to their wont, cruel 
insinuations with their criticisms of the president’s wife. 

“If Mme. de Bonfons lives apart from her husband, she 
must be in very bad health, poor thing. Is she likely to 
recover ? What can be the matter with her ? Is it cancer or 
gastritis, or what is it ? Why does she not go to Paris and 
see some specialist ? She has looked very sallow for a long 
time past. How can she not wish to have a child ? They 
say she is very fond of her husband; why not give him an 
heir in his position ? Do you know, it is really dreadful ! 
If it is only some notion which she has taken into her head, 
it is unpardonable. Poor president! ” 

There is a certain keen insight and quick apprehensiveness 
that is the gift of a lonely and meditative life—and loneliness, 
and sorrow, and the discipline of the last few years had given 
Eugenie this clairvoyance of the narrow lot. She knew 
within herself that the president was anxious for her death 


E UGENIE • GRANDE T. 


223 


that he might be the sole possessor of the colossal fortune, 
now still further increased by the deaths of the Abbe and the 
notary, whom Providence had lately seen fit to promote from 
works to rewards. The poor solitary woman understood 
and pitied the president. Unworthy hopes and selfish calcu¬ 
lations were his strongest motives for respecting Eugenie’s 
hopeless passion. To give life to a child would be death to 
the egoistical dreams and ambitions that the president hugged 
within himself; was it for all these things that his career was 
cut short? while she must remain in her prison house, and 
the coveted gold for which she cared so little was to be 
heaped upon her. It was she who was to live, with the 
thought of heaven always before her, and holy thoughts for 
her companions, to give help and comfort secretly to those 
who were in distress. Mme. de Bonfons was left a widow 
three years after her marriage, with an income of eight hun¬ 
dred thousand livres. 

She is beautiful still, with the beauty of a woman who is 
nearly forty years of age. Her face is very pale and quiet 
now, and there is a tinge of sadness in the low tones of 
her voice. She has simple manners, all the dignity of one 
who has passed through great sorrows, and the saintliness of a 
soul unspotted by the world ; and, no less, the rigidness of an 
old maid, the little penurious ways and narrow ideas of a dull 
country town. 

Although she has eight hundred thousand livres a year, 
she lives just as she used to do in the days of stinted 
allowances of fuel and food while she was still Eugenie 
Grandet; the fire is never lighted in the parlor before or after 
the dates fixed by her father, all the regulations in force in 
the days of her girlhood are still adhered to. She dresses as 
her mother did. That cold, sunless, dreary house, always 
overshadowed by the dark ramparts, is like her own life. 

She looks carefully after her affairs; her wealth accumulates 
from year to year; perhaps she might even be called parsi- 


224 


EUGENIE GRANDET. 


nionious, if it were not for the noble use she makes of her 
fortune. Various pious and charitable institutions, alms¬ 
houses, and orphan asylums, a richly endowed public library, 
and donations to various churches in Saumur, are a sufficient 
answer to the charge of avarice which some few people have 
brought against her. 

They sometimes speak of her in joke as made?noisellej but, 
in fact, people stand somewhat in awe of Mme. de Bonfons. 
It was as if she, whose heart went out so readily to others, 
was always to be the victim of their interested calculations, 
and to be cut off from them by a barrier of distrust; as if for 
all warmth and brightness in her life she was to find only the 
pale glitter of metal. 

“No one loves me but you,” she would sometimes say to 
Nanon. 

Yet her hands are always ready to bind the wounds that 
other eyes do not see, in any house ; and her way to heaven 
is one long succession of kindness and good deeds. The real 
greatness of her soul has risen above the cramping influences 
of her early life. And this is the life-history of a woman who 
dwells in the world, yet is not of it; a woman so grandly 
fitted to be a wife and mother, but who has neither husband 
nor children nor kindred. 

Of late the good folk of Saumur have begun to talk of a 
second marriage for her. Rumor is busy with her name and 
that of the Marquis de Froidfond ; indeed, his family have 
begun to surround the rich widow, just as the Cruchots once 
flocked about Eugenie Grandet. Nanon and Cornoiller, so it 
is said, are in the interest of the Marquis, but nothing could 
be more false ; for big Nanon and Cornoiller have neither of 
them wit enough to understand the corruptions of the world. 



In spite of the discipline enforced by Marshal Suchet in the 
division he commanded in the Peninsular War, all his efforts 
could not restrain an outbreak of license and tumult at the 
taking of Taragona. Indeed, according to trustworthy mili¬ 
tary authorities, the intoxication of victory resulted in some¬ 
thing very like a sack of the town. Pillage was promptly put 
down by the marshal ; and as soon as order was restored, a 
commandant appointed, the military administrators appeared 
upon the scene, and the town began to wear a nondescript 
aspect—the organization was French, but the Spanish popula¬ 
tion was left free to follow in petto its own national customs. 
It would be a task of no little difficulty to determine the 
exact duration of the pillage, but its cause (like that of most 
sublunary events) is sufficiently easy to discover. 

In the marshal’s division of the army there was a regiment 
composed almost entirely of Italians, commanded by a certain 
Colonel Eugene, a man of extraordinary valor, a second 
Murat, who, having come to the trade of war too late, had 
gained no Grand Duchy of Berg, no Kingdom of Naples, nor 
a ball through the heart at Pizzo. But if he had received no 
crown, his chances of receiving bullets were admirably good ; 
and it would have been in no wise astonishing if he had had 
more than one of them. This regiment was made up from 
the wrecks of the Italian Legion, which is in Italy very much 
what the colonial battalions are in France. Stationed on the 
isle of Elba, it had provided an honorable way out of the 
15 ( 225 ) 


226 


THE MARANAS. 


difficulty experienced by families with regard to the future of 
unmanageable sons, as well as a career for those great men 
spoiled in the making, whom society is too ready to brand as 
bad subjects. All of them were men misunderstood, for the 
most part—men who may become heroes if a woman’s smile 
raises them out of the beaten track of glory; or terrible after 
an orgy, when some ugly suggestion, dropped by a boon com¬ 
panion, has gained possession of their minds. 

Napoleon had enrolled these men of energy in the Sixth 
Regiment of the line, hoping to metamorphose them into 
generals, with due allowance for the gaps to be made in their 
ranks by bullets; but the Emperor’s estimate of the ravages 
of death proved more correct than the rest of his calculations. 
It was often decimated, but its character remained the same; 
and the Sixth acquired a name for splendid bravery in the 
field, and the very worst reputation in private life. 

These Italians had lost their captain during the siege of 
Taragona. He was the famous Bianchi who had laid a wager 
during the campaign that he would eat a Spanish sentinel’s 
heart—and won his bet. The story of this pleasantry of the 
camp is told elsewhere in the Scenes de la Vie Parisienne 
therein will be found certain details which corroborate what 
has been said here concerning the legion. Bianchi, the prince 
of those fiends incarnate who had earned the double reputa¬ 
tion of the regiment, possessed the chivalrous sense of honor 
which in the army covers a multitude of the wildest excesses. 
In a word, had he lived a few centuries earlier, he would have 
made a gallant buccaneer. Only a few days before he fell, 
he had distinguished himself by such conspicuous courage in 
action, that the marshal sought to recognize it. Bianchi had 
refused promotion, pension, or a fresh decoration, and asked 
as a favor to be allowed to mount the first scaling-ladder at 
the assault of Taragona as his sole reward. The marshal 
granted the request, and forgot his promise; but Bianchi 
himself put him in mind of it and of Bianchi, for the berserker 


THE MARANAS. 


227 


captain was the first to plant the flag of France upon the wall; 
and there he fell, killed by a monk. 

This historical digression is necessary to explain how it 
came to pass that the Sixth Regiment of the line was the first 
to enter Taragona, and how the tumult, sufficiently natural 
after a town has been carried by storm, degenerated so 
quickly into an attempt to sack it. Moreover, among these 
men of iron, there were two officers, otherwise but little 
remarkable, who were destined by force of circumstances to 
play an important part in this story. 

The first of these, a captain on the clothing establishment— 
half-civilian, half-officer—was generally said, in soldierly lan¬ 
guage, to “ take good care of number one.” 

Outside of his regiment he was wont to swagger and brag 
of his connection with it; he would curl his mustache and 
look a terrible fellow, but his mess had no great opinion of 
him. His money was the secret of his valorous discretion. 
For a double reason, moreover, he had been nicknamed 
“Captain of the Ravens;” because, in the first place, he 
scented the powder a league away; and, in the second, scurried 
out of range like a bird on the wing; the nickname was like¬ 
wise a harmless soldier’s joke, a personality of which another 
might have been proud. Captain Montefiore, of the illustrious 
family of the Montefiori of Milan (though by the law of the 
kingdom of Italy he might not bear his title), was one of the 
prettiest fellows in the army. Possibly his beauty may secretly 
have been additional cause of his prudence on the field of 
battle. A wound in the face by spoiling his profile, scarring 
his forehead, or seaming his cheeks, would have spoiled one 
of the finest heads in Italy, and destroyed the delicate propor¬ 
tions of a countenance such as no woman ever pictured in 
dreams. In Girodet’s picture of the “Revolt of Cairo” 
there is a young dying Turk who has the same type of face, 
the same melancholy expression, of which women are nearly 
always the dupes. The Marchese di Montefiore had property 


228 


THE MARANAS. 


of his own, but it was entailed, and he had anticipated his 
income for several years in order to pay for escapades peculiarly 
Italian and inconceivable in Paris. He had ruined himself by 
running a theatre in Milan for the special purpose of foisting 
upon the public a cantatrice who could not sing, but who 
loved him (so he said) to distraction. 

So Montefiore the captain had good prospects^ and was in 
no hurry to risk them for a paltry scrap of red ribbon. If he 
was no hero, he was at any rate a philosopher; besides, pre¬ 
cedents (if it is allowable to make use of parliamentary ex¬ 
pressions in this connection), precedents are forthcoming. 
Did not Philip II. swear during the battle of Saint-Quentin 
that he would never go under fire again, nor near it, save the 
faggots of the Inquisition ? Did not the Duke of Alva ap¬ 
prove the notion that the involuntary exchange of a crown 
for a cannon-ball was the worst kind of trade in the world ? 
Montefiore, therefore, as a marquis, was of Philip IP’s way of 
thinking ; he was a Philippist in his quality of gay young bach¬ 
elor, and in other respects quite as astute a politician as Philip 
II. himself. He comforted himself for his nickname, and 
for the slight esteem in which he was held by his regiment, 
with the thought that his comrades were sorry scamps; and 
even if they should survive this war of extermination, their 
opinion of him was not likely to gain much credence hereafter. 
Was not his face as good as a certificate of merit ? He saw 
himself a colonel through some accident of feminine favor; 
or, by a skillfully effected transition, the captain on the cloth¬ 
ing establishment would become an orderly, and the orderly 
would in turn become the aide-de-camp of some good-natured 
marshal. The bravery of the uniform and the bravery of the 
man were all as one to the captain on the clothing establish¬ 
ment. So some broad sheet would one day or other call him 
the brave Colonel Montefiore,” and so forth. Then he 
would have a hundred thousand scudi a year, he would marry 
the daughter of a noble house, and no one would dare to 


THE MAR ANAS. 


229 


breathe a word against his courage nor to seek to verify his 
wounds. Finally, it should be stated that Captain Monte- 
fiore had a friend in the person of the quartermaster, a Pro¬ 
vencal, born in the Nice district, Diard by name. 

A friend, be it in the convict’s prison or in an artist’s 
garret, is a compensation for many troubles; and Montefiore 
and Diard, being a pair of philosophers, found compensations 
for their hard life in companionship in vice, much as two 
artists will lull the consciousness of their hardships to sleep 
by hopes of future fame. Both looked at war as a means to 
an end, and not as an end in itself, and frankly called those 
who fell, fools for their pains. Chance had made soldiers of 
both, when they should have been by rights deliberating in a 
congress round a table covered with a green cloth.- Nature 
had cast Montefiore in the mould of Rizzio, and Diard in the 
crucible whence she turns out diplomatists. Both possessed 
the excitable, nervous, half-feminine temperament, which is 
always energetic, be it in good or evil; always at the mercy 
of the caprices of the moment, and swayed by an impulse 
equally unaccountable to commit a crime or to do a generous 
deed, to act as a hero or as a craven coward. The fate of 
such natures as these depends at every moment of their lives 
upon the intensity of the impressions produced upon the ner¬ 
vous system by vehement and short-lived passions. 

Diard was a very fair accountant, but not one of the men 
would have trusted him with his purse, or made him his exec- 
,utor, possibly by reason of the suspicion that the soldier feels 
of officialdom. The quartermaster’s character was not want¬ 
ing in dash, nor in a certain boyish enthusiasm, which is apt 
to wear off as a man grows older and reasons and makes fore¬ 
casts. And for the rest, his humor was variable as the beauty 
of a blonde can sometimes be. He was a great talker on 
every subject. He called himself an artist; and, in imitation 
of two celebrated generals, collected works of art, simply, he 
asserted, to secure them for posterity. His comrades would 


230 


THE MARANAS. 


have been hard put to it to say what they really thought of 
him. Many of them, who were wont to borrow of him at 
need, fancied that he was rich; but he was a gambler, and a 
gambler’s property cannot be called his own. He played 
heavily, so did Montefiore, and all the officers played with 
them; for to man’s shame, be it said, plenty of men will 
meet on terms of equality round a gaming table with others 
whom they do not respect and will not recognize if they meet 
them elsewhere. It was Montefiore who had made that bet 
with Bianchi about the Spaniard’s heart. 

Montefiore and Diard were among the last to advance to the 
assault of the place, but they were the first to go forward into 
the town itself when it was taken. Such things happen in a 
m^lee, and the two friends were old hands. Mutually sup¬ 
ported, therefore, they plunged boldly into a labyrinth of 
narrow dark little streets, each bent upon his own private 
affairs; the one in search of Madonnas on canvas, and the 
other of living originals. 

In some quarter of Taragona, Diard espied a piece of eccle¬ 
siastical architecture, saw that it was the porch of a convent, 
and that the doors had been forced, and rushed in to restrain 
the fury of the soldiery. He was not a moment too soon. 
Two Parisians were about to riddle one of Albani’s Virgins 
with shot, and of these light infantrymen he bought the 
picture, undismayed by the mustaches with which the zealous 
iconoclasts had adorned it. 

Montefiore, left outside, contemplated the front of a cloth 
merchant’s house opposite the convent. He was looking it 
up and down, when a corner of a blind was raised, a girl’s 
head peered forth, a glance like a lightning flash answered his, 
and—a shot was fired at him from the building. Taragona 
carried by assault, Taragona roused to fury, firing from every 
window, Taragona outraged, disheveled, and half-naked, with 
French soldiers pouring through her blazing streets, slaying 
there and being slain, was surely worth a glance from fearless 


THE MARANAS. 


231 


Spanish eyes. What was it but a bull-fight on a grander 
scale ? Montefiore forgot the pillaging soldiers, and for a 
moment heard neither the shrieks, nor the rattle of musketry, 
nor the dull thunder of the cannon. He, the Italian liber¬ 
tine, tired of Italian beauties, weary of all women, dreaming 
of an impossible woman because the possible had ceased to 
have any attraction for him, had never beheld so exquisitely 
lovely a profile as that of this Spanish girl. The jaded 
voluptuary, who had squandered his fortune on follies innumer¬ 
able and on the gratification of a young man’s endless desires; 
the most abominable monstrosity that our society can produce, 
could still tremble. The bright idea of setting fire to the 
house instantly flashed through his mind, suggested, doubtless, 
by the shot from the patriotic cloth merchant’s window; but 
he was alone, and the means of doing it were to seek, fighting 
was going forward in the market-place, where a few desperate 
men still defended themselves. 

He thought better of it. Diard came out of the convent, 
Montefiore kept his discovery to himself, and the pair made 
several excursions through the town together; but on the 
morrow the Italian was quartered in the cloth merchant’s 
house, a very appropriate arrangement for a captain on the 
clothing establishment. It promised him the fulfillment of his 
desire to again see the Spanish girl. 

The first floor of the worthy Spaniard’s abode consisted of 
a vast dimly-lighted shop; protected in front, as the old 
houses in the Rue des Lombards in Paris used to be, by heavy 
iron bars. Behind the shop lay the parlor, lighted by windows 
that looked out into an inner yard. It was a large room, 
redolent of the spirit of the middle ages, with its old dark 
pictures, old tapestry, and antique brasier. A broad-plumed 
hat hung from a nail upon the wall above a matchlock used in 
guerilla warfare, and a heavy brigand’s cloak. The kitchen 
lay immediately beyond this parlor, or living-room, where 
meals were served and cigars smoked; and Spaniards, talking 


232 


THE MARANAS. 


round the smouldering brasier, would nurse hot wrath and 
hatred of the French in their hearts. 

Silver jugs and valuable plate stood on the antique buffet, 
but the room was fitfully and scantily illuminated, so that the 
daylight scarcely did more than bring out faint sparkles from 
the brightest objects in the room ; all the rest of it, and even 
the faces of its occupants, were as dark as a Dutch interior. 
Between the shop itself and this apartment, with its rich sub¬ 
dued tones and old-world aspect, a sufficiently ill-lit staircase 
led to a warehouse, where it was possible to examine the stuffs 
by the light from some ingeniously contrived windows. The 
merchant and his wife occupied the floor above this ware¬ 
house, and the apprentice and tlie maidservant were lodged 
still higher in the attics immediately beneath the roof. This 
highest story overhung the street, and was supported by 
brackets, which gave a quaint look to the house front. On 
the coming of the officer, the merchant and his wife resigned 
their rooms to him and went up to these attics, doubtless to 
avoid friction. 

Montefiore gave himself out to be a Spanish subject by 
birth, a victim to the tyranny of Napoleon, whom he was 
forced to serve against his will. These half-lies produced the 
intended effect. He was asked to join the family at meals, as 
befitted his birth and rank and the name he bore. He had 
his private reasons for wishing to conciliate the merchant’s 
family. Fie felt the presence of his madonna, much as the 
ogre in the fairytale smelt the tender flesh of little Thumbkin 
and his brothers; but thoughjn'?-e succeeded in winning his 
host’s confidence, the latter kept the secret of the madonna 
so well that the captain not only saw no sign of the girl’s 
existence during the first day spent beneath the honest Span¬ 
iard’s roof, but heard no sound that could betray her presence 
in any part of the dwelling. The old house was, however, 
almost entirely built of wood ; every noise above or below 
could be heard through the walls and ceilings, and Montefiore 


THE MARANAS, 


233 


hoped during the silence of the early hours of night to 
guess the young girl’s whereabouts. She was the only 
daughter of his host and hostess, he thought; probably they 
had shut her up in the attics, whither they themselves had 
retired during the military occupation of the town. No indi¬ 
cations, however, betrayed the hiding-place of the treasure. 
The officer might stand with his face glued to the small leaded 
diamond-shaped panes of the window, looking out into the 
darkness of the yard below and the grim walls that rose up 
around it, but no light gleaned from any window save from 
those of the room overhead, where he could hear the old 
merchant and his wife talking, coughing, coming, and going. 
There was not so much even as a shadow of the girl to be 
seen. 

Montefiore was too cunning to risk the future of his passion 
by prowling about the house of a night, by knocking softly at 
all the doors, or by other hazardous expedients. His host 
was a hot patriot, a Spanish father, and an owner of bales of 
cloth; bound, therefore, in each character to be suspicious. 
Discovery would be utter ruin, so Montefiore resolved to bide 
his time patiently, hoping everything from the carelessness of 
human nature; for if rogues, with the best of reasons for 
being cautious, will forget themselves in the long run, so still 
more will honest men. 

Next day he discovered a kind of hammock slung in the 
kitchen—evidently the servant slept there. The apprentice, 
it seemed, spent the night on the counter in the shop. 

At supper-time, on the secc <1 day, Montefiore cursed Na¬ 
poleon till he saw his host’s sombre face relax somewhat. 
The man was a typical, swarthy Spaniard, with a head such as 
used to be carved on the head of a rebeck. A smile of 
gleeful hatred lurked among the wrinkles about his wife’s 
mouth. The lamplight and fitful gleams from the brasier 
filled the stately room with capricious answering reflections. 
The hostess was just oflering a cigarette to their semi-corn- 


234 


THE MARANAS. 


patriot, when Montefiore heard the rustle of a dress, and a 
chair was overturned behind the tapestry hangings. 

‘‘There ! ” cried the merchant’s wife, turning pale, “may 
all the saints send that no misfortune has befallen us ! ” 

“ So you have some one in there, have you?” asked the 
Italian, who betrayed no sign of emotion. 

The merchant let fall some injurious remarks as to girls. 
His wife, in alarm, opened a secret door, and brought in the 
Italian’s madonna, half-dead with fear. The delighted lover 
scarcely seemed to notice the girl; but, lest he might overdo 
the affectation of indifference, he glanced at her, and turning 
to his host, asked in his mother tongue: 

“ Is she your daughter, senor? ” 

Perez de Lagounia (for that was the merchant’s name) had 
had extensive business connections in Genoa, Florence, and 
Leghorn; he knew Italian, and replied in that language. 

“ No. If she had been my own daughter, I should have 
taken fewer precautions, but the child was put into our charge, 
and I would die sooner than allow the slightest harm to befall 
her. But what sense can you expect of a girl of eighteen?” 

“She is very beautiful,” Montefiore said carelessly. He 
did not look at her again. 

“The mother is sufficiently famous for her beauty,” an¬ 
swered the merchant. And they continued to smoke and to 
watch each other. 

Montefiore had imposed upon himself the hard task of 
avoiding the least look that might compromise his attitude 
of indifference ; but as Perez turned his head aside to spit, 
the Italian stole a glance at the girl, and again those spark¬ 
ling eyes met his. In that one glance, with the experienced 
vision that gives to a voluptuary or a sculptor the power of 
discerning the outlines of the form beneath the draperies, he 
beheld a masterpiece created to know all the happiness of 
love. He saw a delicately fair face, which the sun of Spain 
had slightly tinged with a warm brown, that added to a 


THE MARANAS. 


235 


seraphically calm expression a flush of pride, a suffused glow 
beneath the translucent fairness, due, perhaps, to the pure 
Moorish blood that brought animation and color into it. 
Her hair, knotted on the crown of her head, fell in thick 
curls about transparent ears like a child’s, surrounding them 
with dark shadows that made a framework for the white 
throat with its faint blue veins, in strong contrast with the 
fiery eyes and the red finely-curved mouth. The petticoat of 
her country displayed the curving outlines of a figure as pliant 
as a branch of willow. This was no ‘‘Madonna” of Italian 
painters, but “The Madonna” of Spanish art, the Virgin of 
Murillo, the only artist daring enough to depict the rapture 
of the Conception, a delirious flight of the fervid imagination 
of the boldest and most sensuous of painters. Three qualities 
were blended in this young girl; any one of them would have 
sufficed to exalt a woman into a divinity—the purity of the 
pearl in the depths of the sea, the sublime exaltation of a 
Saint Theresa, and a voluptuous charm of which she was her¬ 
self unconscious. Her presence had the power of a talisman. 
Everything in the ancient room seemed to have grown young 
to Montefiore’s eyes since she entered it. But if the appari¬ 
tion was exquisite, the stay was brief; she was taken back to 
her mysterious abiding-place, and thither, shortly afterwards, 
the servant took a light and her supper, without any attempt 
at concealment. 

“You do very wisely to keep her out of sight,” said 
Montefiore in Italian. “I will keep your secret. The 
deuce ! some of our generals would be quite capable of carry¬ 
ing her off by force.” 

Montefiore, in his intoxication, went so far as to think of 
marrying the fair unknown. With this idea in his mind, he 
put some questions to his host. Perez willingly told him the 
strange chance that had given him his ward; indeed, the 
prudent Spaniard, knowing Montefiore’s rank and name, of 
which he had heard in Italy, was anxious to confide the story 


236 


THE MAR ANAS. 


to his guest, to show how strong were the barriers raised 
between the young girl and seduction. Although in the good 
man’s talk there was a certain homely eloquence and force in 
keeping with his simple manner of life, and with that carbine 
shot at Montefiore from the window, his story will be better 
given in an abbreviated form. 

When the French Republic revolutionized the manners of 
the inhabitants of the countries which served as the theatre of 
its wars, a fille-de-joie^ driven from Venice after the fall of 
Venice, came to Taragona. Her life had been a tissue of 
romantic adventure and strange vicissitudes. On no woman 
belonging to her class had gold been showered so often ; so 
often the caprice of some great lord, struck with her extraor¬ 
dinary beauty, had heaped jewels upon her, and all the luxu¬ 
ries of wealth, for a time. For her this meant flowers and 
carriages, pages and tire-women, palaces and pictures, insolent 
pride, journeys like a progress of Catherine II., the life of an 
absolute queen, in fact, whose caprices were law, and whose 
whims were more than obeyed ; and then—suddenly the gold 
would utterly vanish—how, neither she nor any one else, man 
of science, physicist, or chemist could tell, and she was re¬ 
turned again to the streets and to poverty, with nothing in the 
world save her all-powerful beauty. Yet through it all she 
lived without taking any thought for the past, the present, or 
the future. Thrown upon the world, and maintained in her 
extremity by some poor officer, a gambler, adored for his 
mustache, she would attach herself to him like a dog to his 
master, and console him for the hardships of a soldier’s life, 
in all of which she shared, sleeping as lightly under the roof 
of a garret as beneath the richest of silk canopies. Whether 
she was in Spain or Italy, she punctually adhered to religious 
observances. More than once she had bidden love “ return 
to-morrow, to-day I am God’s.” 

But this clay in which gold and spices were mingled, this 
utter recklessness, these storms of passion, the religious faith 


THE MARANAS. 


237 


lying in the heart like a diamond in the mud, the life begun 
and ended in the hospital, the continual game of hazard 
played with the soul and body as its stake; this Alchemy of 
Life, in short, with vice fanning the flame beneath the cruci¬ 
ble in which great careers and fair inheritances and fortune 
and the honor of illustrious names were melted away; all 
these were the products of a peculiar genius, faithfully trans¬ 
mitted from mother to daughter from the times of the middle 
ages. The woman was called La Marana. In her family, 
whose descent since the thirteenth century was reckoned 
exclusively on the spindle side—the idea, person, authority, 
nay, the very name of a father, had been absolutely unknown. 
The name of Marana was for her what the dignity of Stuart 
was to the illustrious race of kings of Scotland, a title of 
honor substituted for the patronymic, when the office became 
hereditary in their family. 

In former times, when France, Spain, and Italy possessed 
common interests, which at times bound them closely together, 
and at least as frequently embroiled all three in wars, the 
word Marana^ in its widest acceptation, meant a courtesan. 
In those ages these women had a definite status of which no 
memory now exists. In France, Ninon de Lenclos and 
Marion Delorme alone played such a part as the Imperias, the 
Catalinas, and Maranas who in the preceding centuries exer¬ 
cised the powers of the cassock, the robe, and the sword. 
There is a church somewhere in Rome built by an Imperia in 
a fit of penitence, as Rhodope of old once built a pyramid in 
Egypt. The epithet by which this family of outcasts once 
was branded became at last their name in earnest, and even 
something like a patent of nobility for vice, by establishing 
its antiquity beyond cavil. 

But for the La Marana of the nineteenth century there 
came a day, whether it was a day of splendor or of misery, 
no man knows, for the problem is a secret between her soul 
and God ; but it was surely in an hour of melancholy, when 


238 


THE MARANAS. 


religion made its voice heard, that with her head in the skies 
she became conscious of the slough in which her feet were 
set. Then she cursed the blood in her veins; she cursed her¬ 
self; she trembled to think that she should bear a daughter; 
and vowed, as these women vow, with the honor and resolution 
of the convict, that is to say, with the strongest resolution, 
the most scrupulous honor to be found under the sun ; making 
her vow, therefore, before an altar, and consecrating it 
thereby, that her daughter should lead a virtuous and holy 
life, that of this long race of lost and sinful women there 
should come at last one angel who should appear for them in 
heaven. That vow made, the blood of the Marana regained 
its sway, and again the courtesan plunged into her life of 
adventure, with one more thought in her heart. At length she 
loved, with the violent love of the prostitute, as Henrietta 
Wilson loved Lord Ponsonby, as Mademoiselle Dupuis loved 
Bolingbroke, as the Marchesa di Pescara loved her husband ; 
nay, she did not love, she adored a fair-haired half-feminine 
creature, investing him with all the virtues that she had not, 
and taking all his vices upon herself. Of this mad union with 
a weakling, a union blessed neither of God nor man, only to 
be excused by the happiness it brings, but never absolved 
by happiness; a union for which the most brazen front must 
one day blush, a daughter was born, a daughter to be saved, a 
daughter for whom La Marana desired a stainless life, and, 
above all things, the instincts of womanliness which she herself 
had not. Thenceforward, in poverty or prosperity, La Marana 
bore within her heart a pure affection, the fairest of all human 
sentiments, because it is the least selfish. Love has its own 
tinge of egoism, but there is no trace of it in a mother’s 
affection. 

And La Marana’s motherhoood meant more to her than to 
other women. It was perhaps her hope of salvation, a plank 
to cling to in the shipwreck of her eternity. Was she not 
accomplishing part of her sacred task on earth by sending 


THE MARANAS. 


239 


one more angel to heaven ? Was not this a better thing 
than a tardy repentance ? Was there any other way now left 
to her of sending up prayers from a pure heart to God ? 

When her daughter was given to her, her Maria-Juana- 
Pepita (the little one should have had the whole calendar for 
patron saints if the mother could have had her will), then La 
Marana set before herself so high an ideal of the dignity of 
motherhood that she sought a truce from her life of sin. 
She would live virtuously and alone. There should be no 
more midnight revels nor wanton days. All her fortunes, 
all her happiness lay in the child’s fragile cradle. The sound 
of the little voice made an oasis for her amid the burning 
sands of her life. How should this love be compared with 
any other? Were not all human affections blended in it 
with every hope of heaven ? 

La Marana determined that no stain should rest upon her 
daughter’s life, save that of the original sin of her birth, which 
she strove to cleanse by a baptism in all social virtues; so she 
asked of the child’s young father a sufficient fortune, and the 
name he bore. The child was no longer Juana Marana, but 
Juana dei Mancini. 

At last, after seven years of joy and kisses, of rapture and 
bliss, the poor Marana must part with her darling, lest she also 
should be branded with her hereditary shame. The mother 
had force of soul sufficient to give up her child for her child’s 
sake ; and sought out, not without dreadful pangs, another 
mother for her, a family whose manners she might learn, 
where good examples would be set before her. A mother’s 
abdication is an act either atrocious or sublime; in this case, 
was it not sublime ? 

At Taragona, therefore, a lucky accident brought the 
Lagounias in her way, and in a manner that brought out all 
the honorable integrity of the Spaniard and the nobleness of 
his wife. For these two, La Marana appeared like an angel 
that unlocks the doors of a prison. The merchant’s fortune 


240 


THE MARANAS. 


and honor were in peril at the moment, and he needed prompt 
and secret help; La Marana handed over to him the sum of 
money intended for Juana’s dowry, asking neither for grati¬ 
tude nor for interest. According to her peculiar notions of 
jurisprudence, a contract was a matter of the heart, a stiletto 
the remedy in the hands of the weak, and God the supreme 
Court of Appeal. 

She told Dona Lagounia the story of her miserable situation, 
and confided her child and her child’s fortune to the honor of 
old Spain, and the untarnished integrity that pervaded the 
old house. Dona Lagounia had no children of her own, and 
was delighted to have an adopted daughter to bring up. The 
courtesan took leave of her darling, feeling that the child’s 
future was secure, and that she had found a mother for Juana, 
a mother who would train her up to be a Mancini, and not a 
Marana. 

Poor Marana, poor bereaved mother, she went away from 
the merchant’s quiet and humble home, the abode of domestic 
and family virtue ; and felt comforted in her grief as she 
pictured Juana growing up in that atmosphere of religion, 
piety, and honor, a maiden, a wife, and a mother, a happy 
mother, not for a few brief years, but all through a long lifetime. 
The tears that fell upon the threshold were tears that angels 
bear to heaven. Since that day of mourning and of hope La 
Marana had thrice returned to see her daughter, an irresistible 
presentiment each time bringing her back. The first time 
Juana had fallen dangerously ill. 

“I knew it ! ” she said to Perez, as she entered his house. 

Far away, and as she slept, she had dreamed that Juana 
was dying. 

She watched over her daughter and tended her, and then 
one morning, when the danger was over, she kissed the sleep¬ 
ing girl’s forehead, and went away without revealing herself. 
The mother within her bade the courtesan depart. 

A second time La Marana came—this time to the church 


THE MARANAS. 


241 


where Juana dei Mancini made her first communion. The 
exiled mother, very plainly dressed, stood in the shadow 
behind a pillar, and saw her past self in her daughter, saw a 
divinely fair face like an angel’s, pure as the newly-fallen snow 
on the heights of the hills. Even in La Marana’s love for 
her child there was a trace of the courtesan ; a feeling of 
jealousy stronger than all love that she had known awoke in 
her heart, and she left the church; she could no longer con¬ 
trol a wild desire to stab Dona Lagounia, who stood there 
with that look of happiness upon her face, too really a mother 
to her child. 

The last meeting between the two had taken place at Milan, 
whither the merchant and his wife had gone. La Marana, 
sweeping along the Corso in almost queenly state, flashed like 
lightning upon her daughter’s sight, and was not recognized. 
Her anguish was terrible. This Marana on whom kisses were 
showered must hunger for one kiss in vain, one for which she 
would have given all the others, the girlish glad caress a 
daughter gives her mother, her honored mother, her mother in 
whom all womanly virtues shine. Juana as long as she lived 
was dead for her. 

What is it, love?” asked the Due de Lina, and at the 
words a thought revived the courtesan’s failing heart, a 
thought that gave her delicious happiness—Juana was safe 
henceforward ! She might perhaps be one of the humblest 
of women, but not a shameless courtesan to whom any man 
might say, What is it, love?” 

Indeed, the merchant and his wife had done their duty 
with scrupulous fidelity. Juana’s fortune in their hands had 
been doubled. Perez de Lagounia had become the richest 
merchant in the province, and in his feeling towards the 
young girl there was a trace of superstition. Her coming had 
saved the old house from ruin and dishonor, and had not the 
presence of this angel brought unlooked-for prosperity? His 
wife, a soul of gold, a refined and gentle nature, had brought 
16 


242 


THE MARANAS. 


lip her charge devoutly; the girl was as pure as she was 
beautiful. Juana was equally fitted to be the wife of a rich 
merchant or of a noble ; she had every qualification for a 
brilliant destiny. But for the war that had broken out, Perez, 
who dreamed of living in Madrid, would ere now have given 
her in marriage to some Spanish grandee. 

I do not know where La Marana is at this moment,” he 
concluded; but wherever she may be, if she hears that our 
province is occupied by your armies, and that Taragona has 
been besieged, she is sure to be on her way hither to watch 
over her daughter.” 

This story wrought a change in the captain’s intentions; 
he no longer thought of making a Marchesa di Moniefiore of 
Juana dei Mancini. He recognized the Marana blood in 
that swift glance the girl had exchanged with him from her 
shelter behind the blind, in the stratagem by which she had 
satisfied her curiosity, in that last look she had given him; 
and the libertine meant to marry a virtuous wife. 

This would be a dangerous escapade, no doubt, but the 
perils were ”of the kind that never sink the courage of the 
most pusillanimous, for love and its pleasures would reward 
them. There were obstacles everywhere; there was the 
apprentice who slept on the counter, and the servant-maid on 
the makeshift couch in the kitchen ; Perez and his wife, who 
kept a dragon’s watch by day, were old, and doubtless slept 
lightly; every sound echoed through the house, everything 
seemed to put the adventure beyond the range of possibilities. 
But as a set-off against these things, Montefiore had an ally— 
the blood of the Marana, which throbbed feverishly in the 
heart of the lovely Italian girl brought up as a Spaniard, the 
maiden athirst for love. Passion, the girl’s nature, and Mon¬ 
tefiore were a combination that might defy the whole world. 

Prompted quite as strongly by the instincts of a chartered 
libertine as by the vague inexplicable hopes to which we give 
the name of presentiments, a word that describes them with 


THE MARANAS. 


243 


such startling aptness—Montefiore took up his stand at his 
window, and spent the early hours of the night there, looking 
down in the presumed direction of the secret hiding-place, 
where the old couple had enshrined their darling, the joy of 
their old age. 

The warehouse on the entresol (to make use of a French 
word that will perhaps make the disposition of the house 
clearer to the reader) separated the two young people, so it 
w'as idle for the captain to try to convey a message by means 
of tapping upon the floor, a shift for speech that all lovers can 
devise under such circumstances. Chance, however, came to 
his assistance, or was it the young girl herself? Just as he 
took his stand at the window he saw a circle of light that fell 
upon the grim opposite wall of the yard, and in the midst of 
it a dark silhouette, the form of Juana. Everything that she 
did was shadowed there ; from her attitude and the move¬ 
ment of her arms, she seemed to be arranging her hair for the 
night. 

Is she alone? ” Montefiore asked himself. ‘‘If I weight 
a letter with a few coins, will it be safe to dangle it by a 
thread against the round window that no doubt lights her 
cell?” 

He wrote a note forthwith, a note characteristic of the 
officer, of the soldier sent for reasons of family expediency 
to the isle of Elba, of the former dilettante Marquis, fallen 
from his high estate, and become a captain on the clothing 
establishment. He wrapped some coins in the note, devised 
a string out of various odds and ends, tied up the packet and 
let it down, without a sound, into the very centre of that 
round brightness. 

“If her mother or the servant is with her,” Montefiore 
thought, “ I shall see the shadows on the wall; and if she 
is not alone, I will draw up the cord at once.” 

But when, after pains innumerable, which can readily be 
imagined, the weighted packet tapped at the glass, only one 


244 


THE MARANAS. 


shadow appeared, and it was the slender figure of Juana that 
flitted across the wall. Noiselessly the young girl opened the 
circular window, saw the packet, took it in, and stood for a 
while reading it. 

Montefiore had written in his own name and entreated an 
interview. He offered, in the style of old romances, his heart 
and hand to Juana dei Mancini—a base and commonplace 
stratagem that nearly always succeeds ! At Juana’s age, is 
not nobility of soul an added danger? A poet of our own 
days has gracefully said that ‘‘only in her strength does 
woman yield.” Let a lover, when he is most beloved, feign 
doubts of the love that he inspires, and in her pride and her 
trust in him, a girl would invent sacrifices for his sake, know¬ 
ing neither the world nor man’s nature well enough to retain 
her self-command when passion stirs within her, and to over¬ 
whelm with her scorn the lover who can accept a whole life 
offered to him to turn away a groundless reproach. 

In our sublimely constituted society a young girl is placed 
in a painful dilemma between the forecasts of prudent virtue 
on the one hand, and the consequences of error upon the 
other. If she resists, it not seldom happens that she loses a 
lover and the first love, that is the most attractive of all; and 
if she is imprudent, she loses a marriage. Cast an eye over 
the vicissitudes of social life in Paris, and it is impossible to 
doubt the necessity of a religion that shall ensure that there 
are no more young girls seduced daily. And Paris is situated 
in the forty-eighth degree of latitude, while Taragona lies 
below the forty-first. The old question of climate is still use¬ 
ful to the novelist seeking an excuse for the suddenness of his 
catastrophe, and is made to explain the imprudence or the 
dilatoriness of a pair of lovers. 

Montefiore’s eyes were fixed meanwhile on the charming 
silhouette in the midst of the bright circle. Neither he nor 
Juana could see each other; an 'unlucky archway above her 
casement, with perverse malignity, cut off all chances of com- 


THE MARAHAS, 


245 


munication by signs, such as two lovers can contrive by lean¬ 
ing out of their windows. So the captain concentrated his 
whole mind and attention upon the round patch on the wall. 
Perhaps all unwittingly the girl’s movements might betray 
her thoughts. Here again he was foiled. Juana’s strange 
proceedings gave Montefiore no room for the faintest hope; 
she was amusing herself by cutting up the billet. 

It often happens that virtue and discretion, in distrust, 
adopt shifts familiar to the jealous Bartholos of comedy- 
Juana, having neither paper, pen, nor ink, was scratching 
an answer with the point of a pair of scissors. In another 
moment she tied the scrap of paper to the string, the officer 
drew it in, opened it, held it up against the lamp, and read 
the perforated characters—“ Come,” it said. 

‘Come?’ ” said he to himself. “ Poison, and carbine, 
and Perez’ dagger ! And how about the apprentice hardly 
asleep on the counter by this time, and the servant in her 
hammock, and the house booming like a bass viol with every 
sound ? why, I can hear old Perez snoring away upstairs ! 
‘ Come ! ’-Then, has she nothing to lose ? ” 

Acute reflection ! Libertines alone can reason thus logi¬ 
cally, and punish a woman for her devotion. The imagina¬ 
tion of man has created Satan and Lovelace, but a maiden is 
an angelic being to whom he can lend nothing but his vices; 
so lofty, so fair is she, that he cannot set her higher nor add 
to her beauty ; he has but the fatal power of blighting this 
creation by dragging it down to his miry level. 

Montefiore waited till the drowsiest hour of the night, then 
in spite of his sober second thoughts, he crept downstairs. 
He had taken off his shoes, and carried his pistols with him, 
and now he groped his way step by step, stopping to listen in 
the silence; trying each separate stair, straining his eyes 
till he almost saw in the darkness, and ready to turn back at 
any moment if the least thing befell him. He wore his hand¬ 
somest uniform ; he had perfumed his dark hair, and taken 



246 


THE MARANAS. 


pains with the toilet that set off his natural good looks. On 
occasions like these, most men are as much a woman as any 
woman. 

Montefiore managed to reach the door of the girl’s secret 
hiding-place without difficulty. It was a little cabinet con¬ 
trived in a corner which projected into another dwelling, a 
not unusual freak of the builder where ground-rents are high, 
and houses in consequence packed very tightly together. 
Here Juana lived alone, day and night, out of sight of all 
eyes. Hitherto she had slept near her adopted mother ; but 
when Perez and his wife removed to the top of the house, the 
arrangements of the attics did not permit of their taking 
their ward thither also. So Dona Lagounia had left the girl 
to the guardianship of the lock of the secret door, to the pro¬ 
tection of religious ideas, but so much the more powerful be¬ 
cause they had become superstitions; and with the further 
safeguards of a natural pride, and the shrinking delicacy of 
the sensitive plant, which made Juana an exception among her 
sex, for to the most pathetic innocence Juana Mancini united 
no less the most passionate aspirations. It had needed a re¬ 
tired life and devout training to quiet and to cool the hot 
blood of the Maranas that glowed in her veins, the impulses 
that her adopted mother called temptations of the Evil one. 

A faint gleam of light beneath the door in the panels dis¬ 
covered its whereabouts for Montefiore. He tapped softly 
with the tips of his finger-nails, and Juana let him in. 
Quivering from head to foot with excitement, he met the 
young girl’s look of naive curiosity, and read the most com¬ 
plete ignorance of her peril, and a sort of childlike admira¬ 
tion in her eyes. He stood, awed for a moment by the 
picture of the sanctuary before him. 

The walls were hung with gray tapestry, covered with 
violet flowers. A small ebony chest, an antique mirror, a 
huge old-fashioned armchair, also made of ebony, and covered 
with tapestry \ another chair beside the spindle-legged table, 


THE MARANAS. 


247 


a pretty carpet on the floor—that was all. But there were 
flowers on the table beside some embroidery work, and at the 
other end of the room stood the little narrow bed on which 
Juana dreamed ; three pictures hung on the wall above it, 
and at the head stood a crucifix above a little holy water 
stoup, and a prayer framed and illuminated in gold. The 
room was full of the faint perfume of the flowers, of the soft 
light of the tapers; it all seemed so quiet, pure, and sacred* 
The subtle charm of Juana’s dreamy fancies, nay of Juana 
herself, seemed to pervade everything ; her soul was revealed 
by her surroundings; the pearl lay there in its shell. 

Juana, clad in white, with no ornament save her own love¬ 
liness, letting fall her rosary to call on the name of Love, 
would have inspired even Montefiore with reverence if it had 
not been for the night about them and the silence, if Juana 
had welcomed love less eagerly, if the little white bed had not 
displayed the turned-down coverlet—the pillow, confidante 
of innumerable vague longings. Montefiore stood there for 
long, intoxicated by joy hitherto unknown ; such joy as Satan, 
it may be, would know at a glimpse of paradise if the cloud- 
veil that envelops heaven was rent away for a moment. 

‘‘I loved you the first moment that I saw you,” he said, 
speaking pure Tuscan in the tones of his musical Italian voice. 
“ In you my soul and my life are set; if you so will it, they 
shall be yours forever.” 

To Juana listening, the air she breathed seemed to vibrate 
with the words grown magical upon her lover’s tongue. 

Poor little girl! how have you breathed the atmosphere 
of this gloomy place so long, and lived ? You,meant to reign 
like a queen in the world, to dwell in the palace of a prince, 
to pass from festival to festival, to feel in your own heart the 
joys that you create, to see the world at your feet, to make 
the fairest splendors pale before the glorious beauty that shall 
never be rivaled —you have lived here in seclysign with this 
old tradesman and his wife ! ” 


248 


THE MARANAS. 


There was a purpose in his exclamation ; he wanted to find 
out whether or no Juana had ever had a lover. 

“ Yes,” she answered. “ But who can have told you my 
inmost thoughts ? For these twelve months past I have been 
weary to death of it. Yes, I would die rather than stay any 
longer in this house. Do you see this embroidery ? I have 
set countless dreadful thoughts into every stitch of it. How 
often I have longed to run away and fling myself into the seal 

Do you ask why ? I have forgotten already-Childish 

troubles, but very keenly felt in spite of their childishness- 

Often at night when I kissed my mother, I have given her 
such a kiss as one gives for a last farewell, saying in my heart, 
I will kill myself to-morrow. After all, I did not die. Sui¬ 
cides go to hell, and I was so much afraid of that, that 1 made 
up my mind to endure my life, to get up and go to bed, and 
do the same things hour after hour of every day. My life 
was not irksome, it was painful. And yet, my father and 
mother worship me. Oh ! I am wicked ! indeed, I tell my 
confessor so.” 

Then have you always lived here without amusements, 
without pleasures ? ” 

“ Oh ! I have not always felt like this. Until I was fifteen 
years old, I enjoyed seeing the festivals of the Church ; I 
loved the singing and the music. I was so happy, because I 
felt that, like the angels, I was sinless, so glad that I might 
take the sacrament every week ; in short, I loved God then. 
But in these three years I have changed utterly, day by day. 
It began when I wanted flowers here in the house, and they 

gave me very beautiful ones; then I wanted- But now I 

want nothing any longer,” she added, after a pause, and she 
smiled at Montefiore. 

Did you not tell me just now in your letter that you would 
love me for ever ? ” 

‘'Yes, my Juana,” murmured Montefiore. He put his 
arm round the waist of this adorable girl and pressed her 





THE MARANAS. 


249 


closely to his heart. “ Yes. But let me speak to you as you 
pray to God. Are you not fairer than Our Lady in heaven ? 
Hear me,” and he set a kiss in her hair, “ for me that fore¬ 
head of yours is the fairest altar on earth; I swear to worship 
you, my idol, to pour out all the wealth of the world upon 
you. My carriages are yours, my palace in Milan is yours, 
yours all the jewels and the diamonds, the heirlooms of my 
ancient house; new ornaments and dresses every day, and all 
the countless pleasures and delights of the world.” 

“Yes,” she said, ‘‘I should like it all very much; but in 
my soul I feel that I should love my dear husband more than 
all things else in the world.” 

Mio caro sposo ! Italian was Juana’s native speech, and it ’ 
is impossible to put into two words of another language the 
wonderful tenderness, the winning grace with which that brief 
delicious phrase is invested by the accents of an Italian 
tongue. “ I shall find,” she said, and the purity of a seraph 
shone in her eyes, “ I shall find my beloved religion again in 

him. His and God’s, God’s and his!- But you are he, 

are you not? ” she cried, after a pause. “ Surely, surely you 
are he ! Ah ! come and see the picture that my father brought 
me from Italy.” 

She took up a candle, beckoned to Montefiore, and showed 
him a picture that hung at the foot of the bed—Saint Michael 
trampling Satan under foot. 

“ Look ! ” she cried, “ has he not your eyes? That made 
me think, as soon as I saw you in the street, that in the meet¬ 
ing I saw the finger of heaven. So often I have lain awake 
in the morning before my mother came to call me to prayer, 
thinking about that picture, looking at the angel, until at last 
I came to think that he was my husband. Mon Dieu / I am 
talking as I think to myself. What wild nonsense it must 
seem to you ! but if you only knew how a poor recluse longs to 
pour out the thoughts that oppress her! I used to talk to 
these flowers and the woven garlands on the tapestry when I 

1 



2B0 


THE MARANAS. 


was alone; they understood me better, I think, than my father 

and mother—always so serious-” 

Juana,” said Montefiore, as he took her hands and kissed 
them, passion shone in his eyes and overflowed in his gestures 
and in the sound of his voice, talk to me as if I were your 
husband, talk to me as you talk to yourself. I have suffered 
all that you have suffered. Few words will be needed, when 
we talk together, to bring back the whole past of either life 
before we met; but there are not words enough in language to 
tell of the bliss that lies before us. Lay your hand on my 
heart. Do you feel how it beats ? Let us vow, before God, 
who sees and hears us, to be faithful to each other all our lives. 
Stay, take this ring. Give me yours.” 

Give away my ring? ” she cried, startled. 

Why not?” asked Montefiore, dismayed by so much 
simplicity. 

‘‘ Why, it came to me from our Holy Father the Pope. 
When I was a little girl a beautiful lady set it on my finger; 
she took care of me, and brought me here, and she told me to 
keep it always.” 

*‘Then you do not love me, Juana? ” 

Ah ! here it is,” she cried. ‘‘Are you not more myself 
than I?” 

She held out the ring, trembling as she did so, keeping her 
fingers tightly clasped upon it as she looked at Montefiore with 
clear, questioning eyes. That ring meant her whole self: she 
gave it to him. 

“Oh ! my Juana ! ” said Montefiore as he held her closely 
in his arms, “only a monster could be false to you. I will 
love you for ever.” 

Juana grew dreamy. Montefiore, thinking within himself 
that in his first interview, he must not run the slightest risk of 
startling a girl so innocent, whose imprudence sprang rather 
from virtue than from desire, was fain to content himself with 
thinking of the future of her beauty now that he had known 


THE MARANAS. 


251 


its power, ana of the innocent marriage of the ring, that most 
sublime of betrothals, the simplest and most binding of all 
ceremonies, the betrothal of the heart. 

For the rest of the night, and all day long on the morrow 
Juana’s imagination would surely become the accomplice of 
his desires. So he put constraint upon himself, and tried to 
be as respectful as he was tender. With these thoughts present 
in his mind, prompted by his passion, and yet more by the 
desires that Juana inspired in him, his words were insinuating 
and fervent. He led the innocent child to plan out the new 
life before them, painted the world for her in the most glow¬ 
ing colors, dwelt on the household details that possess such 
a delightful interest for young girls, and made with her the 
compacts over which lovers dispute, the agreements that give 
rights and reality to love. Then, when they had decided the 
hour for their nightly tryst, he went, leaving a happy but a 
changed Juana. The simple and innocent Juana no longer 
existed, already there was more passion than a girl should 
reveal in the last glance that she gave him, in the charming 
way that she held up her forehead for the touch of her lover’s 
lips. It was all the result of solitude and irksome tasks upon 
this nature; if she was to be prudent and virtuous, the knowl¬ 
edge of the world should either have come to her gradually 
or have been hidden from her for ever. 

How slowly the day will go to-morrow! ” she said, as 
another kiss, still respectfully given, was pressed upon her 
forehead. 

But you will sit in the dining-room, will you not ? and 
raise your voice a little when you talk, so that I may hear you, 
and the sound may fill my heart.” 

Montefiore, beginning to understand the life that Juana led, 
was but the better pleased that he had managed to restrain his 
desires that he might the better secure his end. He returned 
to his room without mishap. 

Ten days went by, and nothing occurred to disturb the 


•262 


THE MAE A NAS. 


peace and quiet of the house. Montefiore, with the persua¬ 
sive manners of an Italian, had gained the good graces of old 
Perez and Doila Lagounia; indeed, he was popular with the 
whole household—with the apprentice and the maidservant; 
but in spite of the confidence that he had succeeded in inspir¬ 
ing in them, he never attempted to take advantage of it to 
ask to see Juana, or to open the door of that little sealed 
paradise. The Italian girl, in her longing to see her lover, had 
often besought him to do this, but from motives of prudence 
he had always refused. On the contrary, he had used the 
character he had gained and all his skill to lull the suspicions 
of the old couple ; he had accustomed them to his habit of 
never rising till mid-day, soldier as he was. The captain gave 
out that his health was bad. So the two lovers only lived 
at night when all the household was asleep. 

If Montefiore had not been a libertine to whom a long 
experience of pleasure had given presence of mind under all 
conditions, they would have been lost half a score of times in 
those ten days. A young lover, with the single-heartedness 
of first love, would have been tempted in his rapture into 
imprudences that were very hard to resist; but the Italian was 
proof even against Juana, against her pouting lips, her wild 
spirits, against a Juana who wound the long plaits of her hair 
about his throat to keep him by her side. The keenest 
observer would have been sorely puzzled to detect those mid¬ 
night meetings. It may well be believed that the Italian, 
sure of his ultimate success, enjoyed prolonging the ineffable 
pleasure of this intrigue in which he made progress step by 
step, in fanning the flame that gradually waxed hotter, till 
everything must yield to it at last. 

On the eleventh day, as they sat at dinner, he deemed it 
expedient to confide to Perez (under the seal of secrecy) the 
history of the disgrace into which he had fallen among his 
family. It was a mesalliance, he said. 

There was something revolting in this lie, told as a confi- 


THE MAR A NAS. 


253 


dence, while that midnight drama was in progress beneath 
the old man’s roof. Montefiore, an experienced actor, was 
leading up to a catastrophe planned by himself; and, like 
an artist who loves his art, he enjoyed the thought of it. 
He meant very shortly to take leave of the house and of his 
lady-love without regret. And when Juana, risking her life 
it might be to ask the question, should inquire of Perez 
what had become of their guest, Perez would tell her, all 
unwittingly, that “ the Marchese di Montefiore has been recon¬ 
ciled with his family; they have consented to receive his wife, 
and he has taken her to them.” 

And Juana ?- The Italian never inquired of himself what 

would become of her; he had had ample opportunity of 
knowing her nobleness, her innocence, and her goodness, and 
felt sure that Juana would keep silence. 

He obtained a message to carry for some general or other. 
Three days afterwards, on the night before he must start, 
Montefiore went straight to Juana’s room instead of going first 
to his own. The same instinct that bids the tiger leave no 
morsel of his prey prompted the Italian to lengthen the night 
of farewells. Juana, the true daughter of two southern lands, 
with the passion of Spain and of Italy in her heart, was enrap¬ 
tured by the boldness that brought her lover to her and re¬ 
vealed the ardor of his love. To know the delicious torment 
of an illicit passion under the sanction of marriage, to conceal 
her husband behind the bed-curtains, half deceiving the 
adopted father and mother, to whom she could say in case of 
discovery, ** I am the Marchesa di Montefiore,” was not this 
a festival for the young and romantic girl who, for three years 
past, had dreamed of love—love always beset with perils ? 
The curtains of the door fell, drawing about their madness 
and happiness a veil which it is useless to raise. 

It was nearly nine o’clock, the merchant and his wife were 
reading the evening prayer, when suddenly the sound of a 
carriage, drawn by several horses, came from the narrow street 



254 


THE MAR A HAS. 


without. Some one knocked hastily and loudly at the door 
of the shop. The servant ran to open it, and in a moment a 
woman sprang into the quaint old room—a woman magnifi¬ 
cently dressed, though her traveling carriage was besplashed 
by the mire of many roads, for she had crossed Italy and 
France and Spain. It was La Marana ! La Marana, in spite 
of her thirty-six years and her riotous life, in the full pride of 
her bdtdfolgorante, to record the superb epithet invented for 
her in Milan by her enraptured adorers. La Marana, the 
openly avowed mistress of a king, had left Naples and its 
festivals and sunny skies, at the very height and summit of 
her strange career—had left gold and madrigals and silks and 
perfumes, and her royal lover, when she learned from him 
what was passing in Spain, and how that Taragona was besieged. 

Taragona ! ” she cried, “ and before the city is taken ! I 
must be in Taragona in ten days! ” And without another 
thought for courts or crowned heads, she had reached Tara¬ 
gona, provided with a passport that gave her something like 
the powers of an empress, and with gold that enabled her to 
cross the French empire with the speed and splendor of a 
rocket. There is no such thing as distance for a mother; she 
who is a mother, indeed, sees her child, and knows by instinct 
how it fares though they are as far apart as the poles. 

*‘My daughter! my daughter !” cried La Marana. 

At that cry, at this swift invasion of their house, and appa¬ 
rition of a queen traveling incognito, Perez and his wife let 
the prayer-book fall; that voice rang in their ears like a thun¬ 
der-clap, and La Marana’s eyes flashed lightnings. 

*‘She is in there,” the merchant answered quietly, after a 
brief pause, during which they recovered from the shock of 
surprise caused by La Marana’s sudden appearance, and by 
her look and tone. ** She is in there,” he said again, indi¬ 
cating the little hiding-place. 

“ Yes, but has she not been ill? Is she quite-” 

Perfectly well,” said Dofia Lagounia. 



THE MAE A NAS. 


255 


Oh, God ! ” cried La Marana, “ plunge me now in hell 
for all eternity, if it be Thy pleasure,” and she sank down 
utterly exhausted into a chair. 

The flush that anxiety had brought to her face faded sud¬ 
denly ; her cheeks grew white ; she who had borne up bravely 
under the strain, had no strength left when it was over. The 
joy was too intolerable, a joy more intense than her previous 
distress, for she was still vibrating with dread, when bliss keen 
as anguish came upon her. 

“ But how have you done ! ” she asked. Taragona was 
taken by assault.” 

“Yes,” answered Perez. “ But when you saw that I was 
alive, how could you ask such a question ? How should any 
one reach Juana but over my dead body?” 

The courtesan grasped Perez’ horny hand on receiving this 
answer ; tears gathered in her eyes and fell upon his fingers 
as she kissed them—the costliest of all things under the sun 
for her, who never wept. 

“Brave Perez!” she said at last; “but surely there are 
soldiers billeted upon you, are there not ? ” 

“Only one,” answered the Spaniard. “Luckily, we have 
one of the most honorable of men, an Italian by nationality, 
a Spaniard by birth, a hater of Bonaparte, a married man, a 
steady character. He rises late, and goes to bed early. He 
is in bad health, too, just now.” 

“ An Italian ! What is his name ? ” 

“ Captain Montefiore, he-” 

“ Why, he is not the Marchese di Montefiore, is he ? ” 

“ Yes, sefiora, the very same.” 

“ Has he seen Juana ? ” 

“ No,” said 3 >ofia Lagounia. 

“You are mistaken, wife,” said Perez. “The Marquis 
must have seen Juana once, only for a moment, it is true, but 
I think he must have seen her that day when she came in at 
supper-time.” 



256 


THE MARANAS. 


“ Ah ! I should like to see my daughter.” 

“ Nothing is easier,” said Perez. “ She is asleep. Though 
if she has left the key in the lock, we shall have to wake 
her.” 

As the merchant rose to take down the duplicate key from 
its place, he happened to glance up through the tall window. 
The light from the large round pane-opening of Juana’s cell 
fell upon the dark wall on the opposite side of the yard, 
tracing a gleaming circle there, and in the midst of the lighted 
space he saw two shadowy figures such as no sculptor till the 
time of the gifted Canova could have dreamed of. The 
Spaniard turned to the room again. 

I do not know,” he said to La Marana, “ where we have 
put the key-” 

“You look very pale ! ” she exclaimed. 

“ I will soon tell you why,” he answered, as he sprang 
towards his dagger, caught it up, and beat violently on the 
door in the paneling. “Open the door!” he shouted. 
“Juana ! open the door ! ” 

There was an appalling despair in his tones that struck 
terror into the two women who heard him. 

Juana did not open, because there was some delay in hiding 
Montefiore. She knew nothing of what had passed in the 
room without. The tapestry hangings on either side of the 
door deadened all sounds. 

“ Madame,” said Perez, turning to La Marana, “ I told you 
just now that I did not know where the key was. That was 
a lie. Here it is,” and he took it from the sideboard, “ but 
it is useless. Juana’s key is in the lock, and her door is bar¬ 
ricaded. We are deceived, wife 1 There is a man in Juana’s 
room.” 

“ By my hopes of salvation, the thing is impossible!” 
said Dona Lagounia. 

“ Do not perjure yourself, Doiia Lagounia. Our honor is 
slain ; and she"' (he turned to La Marana, who had risen to her 


THE MARANAS, 


257 


feet, and stood motionless as if thunderstruck by his words), 
“ she may well scorn us. She saved our lives, our fortune, and 
our honor, and we have barely guarded her money for her— 
Juana, open the door! ” he shouted, “or I will break it down ! ” 

The whole house rang with the cry; his voice grew louder 
and angrier; but he was cool and self-possessed. He held 
Montefiore’s life in his hands, in another moment he would 
wash away his remorse in every drop of the Italian’s blood. 

“ Go out ! go out ! go out ! all of you ! ” cried La Marana, 
and springing for the dagger like a tigress, she snatched it 
from the hand of the astonished Perez. “ Go out of this 
room, Perez,” she went on, speaking quite quietly now. Go 
out, you and your wife, and the maid and the apprentice. 
There will be a murder here directly, and you might all be 
shot down by the French for it. Do not you mix yourself up 
in it, it is my affair entirely. When my daughter and I meet, 
God alone should be present. As for the man, he is mine. 
The whole world should not snatch him out of my hands. 
There, there, go! I forgive you. I see it all. The girl is a 
Marana. My blood flows in her veins, and you, your religion, 
and your honor have been powerless against it.” 

Her groan was dreadful to hear. She turned dry eyes upon 
them. She had lost everything, but she was accustomed to 
suffering; she was a courtesan. The door opened. La 
Marana henceforth heeded nothing else, and Perez, making a 
sign to his wife, could remain at his post. The old Spaniard, 
implacable where honor was concerned, determined to assist 
the wronged mother’s vengeance. Juana, in her white drap¬ 
eries, stood quietly there in her room in the soft lamplight. 
“ What do you want with me? ” she asked. 

In spite of herself, a light shudder ran through La Marana. 

“Perez,” she asked, “is there any other way out of this 
closet ? ” 

Perez shook his head; and on that the courtesan went into 
the room. 

17 


258 


THE MARANAS. 


‘‘Juana/* she said, “ I am your mother, your judge—you 
have put yourself in the one situation in which I can reveal 
myself to you. You have come to my level, you whom I had 
thought to raise to heaven. Oh! you have fallen very 
low!- You have a lover in your room.” 

“ Madame, no one but my husband should or could be 
there,” she answered. “ I am the Marchesa di Montefiore.’* 

“ Then are there two of them ? ” asked old Perez sternly. 
“ He told me that he was married.” 

“ Montefiore ! my love ! ” cried the girl, rending the cur¬ 
tains, and discovering the officer; “come forward, these 
people are slandering you.” 

The Italian’s face was haggard and pale; he saw the 
dagger in La Marana’s hand, and he knew La Marana. At 
one bound he sprang out of the chamber, and with a voice of 
thunder shouted, “Help! help! murder! they are killing a 
Frenchman ! Soldiers of the Sixth of the line, run for Cap¬ 
tain Diard !- Help! ” 

Perez had secured the Marquis, and was about to gag him 
by putting his large hand over the soldier’s mouth, when the 
courtesan stopped him. 

“ Hold him fast,” she said, “ but let him call. Throw open 
the doors, and leave them open; and now go out, all of you, 
I tell you ! As for you,” she continued, addressing Monte¬ 
fiore, “ shout, and call for help- As soon as there is a 

sound of your men’s footsteps, this blade will be in your 
heart- Are you married ? Answer me.” 

Montefiore, lying across the threshold of the door, two 
paces from Juana, heard nothing, and saw nothing, for the 
blinding gleam of the dagger blade. 

“ Then he meant to deceive me; ” the words came slowly 
from Juana. “ He told me that he was free.” 

“He told me that he was a married man,” said Perez, in 
the same stern tones as before. 

“ Holy Virgin ! ” exclaimed Dofia Lagounia. La Marana 






THE MAKANAS. 


259 


Stooped to mutter in the ear of the Marquis, ‘‘Answer me, 
will you, soul of mud ? ” 

“Your daughter-” Montefiore began. 

“The daughter I once had is dead, or she soon will be,’* 
said La Marana. “ I have no daughter now. Do not use 
that word again. Answer me, are you married ? ” 

“ No, madame,” Montefiore said at last (he wished to gain 
time) ; “I mean to marry your daughter.” 

“ My noble Montefiore ! ” cried Juana, with a deep breath. 

“ Then what made you fly and call for help ! ” demanded 
Perez. 

Terrible perspicacity! 

Juana said nothing, but she wrung her hands, went over to 
her armchair, and sat down. Even at that moment there was 
an uproar in the street, and in the deep silence that fell upon 
the parlor it was sufficiently easy to catch the sounds. A 
private soldier of the Sixth, who had chanced to pass along 
the street when Montefiore cried out for help, had gone to 
call up Diard. Luckily, the quartermaster was in his lodging, 
and came at once with several comrades. 

“Why did I fly?” repeated Montefiore, who heard the 
sound of his friend’s voice. “Because I had told you the 
truth. Diard ! Diard I ” he shrieked aloud. 

But at a word from Perez, who meant that all in his house 
should share in the murder, the apprentice made the door fast, 
and the men were obliged to force it open. La Marana, there¬ 
fore, could stab the guilty creature at her feet before they 
made an entrance; but her hand shook with pent-up wrath, 
and the blade slipped aside upon Montefiore’s epaulette. Yet 
so heavy had been the blow, that the Italian rolled over 
almost at Juana’s feet. The girl did not see him, but La 
Marana sprang upon her prey, and, lest she should fail this 
time, she held his throat in an iron grasp, and pointed the 
dagger at his heart. 

“lam free ! ” he gasped. “I will marry her! I swear it 



260 


THE MAE A NAS. 


by God ! by my mother! by all that is most sacred in this 
world. I am not married ! I will marry her! Upon my 
word of honor, I will! ” and he set his teeth in the cour¬ 
tesan’s arm. 

*‘That is enough, mother.” said Juana; “kill him! I 
would not have such a coward for my husband if he were ten 
times more beautiful.” 

“ Ah ! that is my daughter ! ” cried La Marana. 

“What is going on here?” asked the quartermaster, look¬ 
ing about him. 

“ This,” shouted Montefiore ; “ they are murdering me on 
that girl’s account; she says that I am her lover; she trapped 
me, and now they want to force me to marry her against my 
will-” 

“ Against your will ? ” cried Diard, struck with the sublime 
beauty that indignation, scorn, and hate had lent to Juana’s 
face, already so fair. “You are very hard to please ! If she 
must have a husband, here am I. Put up your dagger.” 

La Marana grasped the Italian, pulled him to his feet, 
brought him to the bedside, and said in his ear— 

“ If I spare your life, you may thank that last speech of 
yours for it. But keep it in mind. If you say a word against 
my daughter, we shall see each other again. What will her 
dowry amount to?” she asked of Perez. 

“Two hundred thousand piastres down-” 

“That will not be all, monsieur,” said the courtesan, ad¬ 
dressing Diard. “ Who are you? You can go,” she added, 
turning to Montefiore. 

But when the Marquis heard mention of two hundred thou¬ 
sand piastres down, he came forward, saying, “ I am really 
quite free-” 

“You are really quite free to go,” said La Marana, and 
the Italian went. 

“Alas! monsieur,” the girl spoke, addressing Diard; “I 
thank you, and I admire you. But my bridegroom is in 




THE MARANAS. 261 

heaven; I shall be the bride of Christ. To-morrow I shall 
enter the convent of-” 

“ Oh, hush ! hush ! Juana, my Juana ! *' cried her mother, 
holding the girl tightly in her arms. Then she whispered, 
“You must take another bridegroom.’* 

Juana turned pale. 

“ Who are you, monsieur ? ” asked the mother of the Pro¬ 
vencal. 

“ I am nothing as yet but a quartermaster in the Sixth 
Regiment of the line,” said he ; “ but for such a wife, a man 
would feel that it lay in him to be a marshal of France some 
day. My name is Pierre-Francois Diard. My father was a 
guild magistrate, so I am not a-” 

“Eh! you are an honest man, are you not?” cried La 
Marana. “ If the Signorina Juana dei Mancini cares for you, 
you may both be happy. Juana,” she w'ent on gravely, 
“when you are the wife of a good and worthy man, remem¬ 
ber that you will be a mother. I have sworn that you shall 

set a kiss upon your child’s forehead without a blush- 

(Here her tone changed somewhat.) I have sworn that you 
shall be a virtuous wife. So in this life, though many trou¬ 
bles await you, whatever happens to you, be a chaste and 
faithful wife to your husband ; sacrifice everything to him ; 

he will be the father of your children- A father to your 

children I- Stay, between you and a lover your mother 

always will stand ; I shall be your mother only when danger 

threatens- Do you see Perez’s dagger ? Thai is part of 

your dower,” and she flung the weapon down on the bed. 
“ There I leave it as a guarantee of your honor, so long as I 
have eyes to see and hands that can strike a blow. Fare¬ 
well,” she said, keeping back the tears; “ may heaven direct 
that we never meet again,” and at that her tears flowed 
fast. 

“ Poor child ! you have been very happy in this little cell, 
happier than you know. Act in such a way that she may 







262 


THE MARANAS. 


never look back on it with regret,” La Marana added, look¬ 
ing at her future son-in-law. 

The story, which has been given simply by way of intro¬ 
duction, is not by any means the subject of the following 
study; it has been told to explain, in the first place, how 
Montcfiorc and Diard became acquainted, how Captain Diard 
came to marry Juana dci Mancini, and to make known what 
passions filled Mme. Diard’s heart, what blood flowed in her 
veins. 

By the time that the quartermaster had been through the 
slow and tedious formalities indispensable for a French soldier 
who is obtaining leave to marry, he had fallen passionately in 
love with Juana dei Mancini, and Jiiana dei Mancini had had 
time to reflect on her fate. An appalling fate ! Juana, who 
neither loved nor esteemed this Diard, was none the less 
bound to him by a promise, a rash promise no doubt, but 
there had been no help for it. The Provencal was neither 
handsome nor well made. His manners were totally lacking 
in distinction, and savored of the camp, of his provincial 
bringing up and imperfect education. How should the young 
girl love Diard? With her perfect elegance and grace, her 
unconquerable instinct for luxury and refinement, her natural 
inclinations were towards the higher spheres of society; and 
she could not bring herself to feel so much as esteem for this 
Diard who was to marry her, and precisely for that very reason. 

The repugnance was very natural. Woman is a sacred and 
gracious being, almost always misunderstood; the judgments 
passed upon her are almost always unjust, because she is 
not understood. If Juana had loved Diard, she would have 
esteemed him. Love creates a new self within a woman ; the 
old self passes away with the dawn of love, and in the wed¬ 
ding-robe of a passion that shall last as long as life itself, her 
life is invested with whiteness and purity. After this new 
birth, this revival of modesty and virtue, she has no longer 


THE MAE A NAS. 


263 


a past; it is utterly forgotten ; she turns wholly to the future 
that she may learn all things afresh. In this sense, the words 
of the famous line that a modern poet has put into the mouth 
of Marion Delorme, a line, moreover, that Corneille might 
well have written, arc steeped in truth— 

**And Love gives back my maidenhood to me.'* 

Does it not read like a reminiscence of some tragedy of Coi- 
neillc’s? Tlie style of the father of French drama, so forceful, 
owing so little to epithet, seems to be revived again in the 
words. And yet the writer, the poet of our own day, has 
been compelled to sacrifice it to the taste of a public only 
capable of appreciating vaudevilles. 

So Juana, loveless, was still the same Juana, betrayed, 
humiliated, brought very low. How should this Juana respect 
a man who could take her thus? With the high-minded 
purity of youth, she felt the force of a distinction, subtle in 
appearance, but real and immutable, a binding law upon the 
heart, which even the least thoughtful women instinctively 
apply to all their sentiments. Life had opened out before 
Juana, and the prospect saddened her inmost soul. 

Often she looked at Perez and Dofia Lagounia, her eyes 
full of the tears she was too proud to let fall; they under¬ 
stood the bitter thoughts contained in those tears, but they 
said no word. Were not reproaches useless? And why should 
they seek to comfort her? The keener the sympathy, the 
wider the pent-up sorrow would spread. 

One evening, as Juana sat in her little cell in a dull stupor 
of wretchedness, she heard the husband and wife talking 
together. They thought that the door was shut, and a wail 
broke from her adopted mother. 

The poor child will die of grief! 

Yes,” answered Perez in a faltering voice; ** but what can 
we do ? Can I go now to boast of my ward’s chaste beauty to 
the Comte d’Arcos, to whom I hoped to marry her?” 


264 


THE MARANAS. 


There is a difference between one slip and vice,” said 
the old woman, indulgent as an angel could have been. 

“ Her mother gave her to him,” objected Perez. 

“ All in a minute, and without consulting her ! ” cried Dofia 
Lagounia. 

She knew quite well what she was doing-” 

“ Into what hands our pearl will pass ! ” 

Not a word more, or I will go and pick a quarrel with 
that- Diard ! ” 

And then there would be one more misfortune,” exclaimed 
Dona Lagounia. 

Juana, listening to these terrible words, knew at last the 
value of the happy life that had flowed on untroubled until 
her error ended it. So the innocent hours in her peaceful 
retreat were to have been crowned by a brilliant and splendid 
existence; the delights so often dreamed of would have been 
hers. Those dreams had caused her ruin. She had fallen 
from the heights of social greatness to the feet of Monsieur 
Diard ! Juana wept; her thoughts almost drove her mad. 
For several seconds she hesitated between a life of vice and 
religion. Vice offered a prompt solution; religion, a life 
made up of suffering. The inward debate was stormy and 
solemn. To-morrow was the fatal day, the day fixed for 
this marriage. It was not too late; Juana might be Juana 
still. If she remained free, she knew the utmost extent of 
her calamities; but when married, she could not tell what 
might lie in store for her. Religion gained the day. Dona 
Lagounia came to watch and pray by her daughter’s side, as 
she might have done by a dying woman’s bed. 

‘‘It is the will of God,” she said to Juana. Nature gives 
to a woman a power peculiarly her own, that enables her to 
endure suffering, a power succeeded in turn by weakness that 
counsels resignation. Juana submitted without an after¬ 
thought. She determined to fulfill her mother’s vow, to cros^ 
the desert of life, and so reach heaven, knowing that no 




THE MARANAS. 


265 


flowers could spring up in the thorny paths that lay before her. 
She married Diard. 

As for the quartermaster, though Juana judged him piti¬ 
lessly, who else would not have forgiven him ? He was intox¬ 
icated with love. La Marana, with the quick instinct natural 
to her, had felt passion in the tones of his voice, and seen in 
him the abrupt temper, the impulsive generosity of the south. 
In the paroxysm of her great anger she had seen Diard’s good 
qualities, and these only, and thought that these were sufficient 
guarantees for her daughter’s happiness. 

And to all appearance the early days of this marriage were 
happy. But to lay bare the underlying facts of the case, the 
miserable secrets that women bury in the depths of their souls, 
Juana had determined that she would not overcloud her 
husband’s joy. All women who are victims of an ill-assorted 
marriage come sooner or later to play a double part—a part 
terrible to play, and Juana had already taken up her role. 
Of such a life, a man can only record the facts ; and women’s 
hearts alone can divine the inner life of sentiments. Is it not 
a story impossible to relate in all its truth? Juana, struggling 
every hour against her own nature, half-Spanish, half-Italian; 
Juana, shedding tears in secret till she had no tears left to 
shed, was a typical creation, a living symbol, destined to 
represent the uttermost extent of woman’s misfortunes. The 
minute detail required to depict that life of restless pain would 
be without interest for those who crave melodramatic sensa¬ 
tion. And would not an analysis,'in which every wife would 
discover some of her own experience, require an entire volume 
if it were to be given in full ? Such a book, by its very nature, 
would be impossible to write, for its merits must consist in 
half-tones and in subtle shades of color that critics would 
consider vague and indistinct. And besides, who that does not 
bear another heart within his heart can touch on the pathetic, 
deeply-hidden tragedies that some women take with them 
to their graves ; the heartache, understood of none—not even 


266 


THE MARANAS. 


of those who cause it; the sighs in vain; the devotion that; 
here on earth at least, meets with no return; unappreciated 
magnanimities of silence and scorn of vengeance ; unfailing 
generosity, lavished in vain; longings for happiness destined 
to be unfulfilled; angelic charity that blesses in secret; all 
the beliefs held sacred, all the inextinguishable love ? This 
life Juana knew; fate spared her in nothing. Hers was to 
be in all things the lot of a wronged and unhappy wife, 
always forgiving her wrongs; a woman pure as a flawless 
diamond, though through her beauty, as flawless and as 
dazzling as the diamond, a way of revenge lay open to her. 
Of a truth, she need not dread the dagger in her dower. 

But at first, under the influence of love, of a passion that for 
a while at least can work a change in the most depraved 
nature, and bring to light all that is noblest in a human soul, 
Diard behaved like a man of honor. He compelled Monte- 
fiore to go out of the regiment, and even out of that division 
of the army, that his wife might not be compelled to meet the 
Marquis during the short time that she was to remain in 
Spain. Then the quartermaster asked to change his regiment, 
and managed to exchange into the Imperial Guard. He 
meant at all costs to gain a title ; he would have honors and a 
great position to match his great fortune. With this thought 
in his mind, he displayed great courage in one of our bloodiest 
battles in Germany, and was so badly wounded that he could 
no longer stay in the service. For a time it was feared that 
he might have to lose his leg, and he was forced to retire, with 
his pension indeed, but without the title of baron or any 
of the rewards which he had hoped for, and very likely would 
have won, if his name had not been Diard. 

These events, together with his wound and his disappointed 
hopes, made a changed man of the late quartermaster. The 
Proven(;:ars energy, wrought for a time to a fever pitch, sud¬ 
denly deserted him. At first, however, his wife sustained his 
courage ; his efforts, his bravery, and his ambition had given 


THE MAR ANAS. 


267 


her some belief in her husband ; and surely it behooved her, 
of all women, to play a woman’s part, to be a tender consoler 
for the troubles of life. 

Juana’s words put fresh heart into the major. He went to 
live in Paris, determined to make a high position for himself 
in the administration; the quartermaster of the Sixth Line 
Regiment should be forgotten, and some day Madame Diard 
should wear a splendid title. His passion for his charming 
wife had made him quick to guess her inmost wishes. Juana 
did not speak of them, but he understood her; he was not 
loved as a man dreams of being loved—he knew it, and 
longed to be looked up to and loved and caressed. The 
luckless man anticipated happiness with a wife who was at all 
times so submissive and so gentle ; but her gentleness and her 
submission meant nothing but that resignation to her fate 
which had given Juana to him. Resignation and religion, 
were these love ? Diard could often have wished for a refusal 
instead of that wifely obedience; often he would have given 
his soul if Juana would but have deigned to weep upon his 
breast, and ceased to conceal her feelings with the smile that 
she wore proudly as a mask upon her face. 

Many a man in his youth (for after a certain time we give 
up struggling) strives to triumph over an evil destiny that 
brings the thunder-clouds from time to time above the horizon 
of his life; and when he falls into the depths of misfortune, 
those unrequited struggles should be taken into account. 
Like many another, Diard tried all ways, and found all ways 
barred against him. His wealth enabled him to surround his 
wife with all the luxuries that can be enjoyed in Paris. She 
had a great mansion and vast drawing-rooms, and presided 
over one of those houses frequented by some few artists who 
are uncritical by nature, by a great many schemers, by the 
frivolous folk who are ready to go anywhere to be amused, 
and by certain men of fashion, attracted by Juana’s beauty. 
Those who make themselves conspicuous in Paris must either 


268 


THE MARANAS. 


conquer Paris or fall victims. Diard’s character was not 
strong enough, nor compact enough, nor persistent enough to 
impress itself upon the society of a time when every one else 
was likewise bent upon reaching a high position. Ready¬ 
made social classifications are not improbably a great blessing, 
even for the people. Napoleon’s ‘‘ Memoirs ” have informed 
us of the pains he was at to impose social conventions upon a 
court composed for the most part of subjects who had once 
been his equals. But Napoleon was a Corsican, Diard was a 
Provencal. 

If the two men had been mentally equal—an islander is 
always a more complete human being than a man born and 
bred on the mainland ; and though Provence and Corsica lie 
between the same degrees of latitude, the narrow stretch of 
sea that keeps them apart is, in spite of man’s inventions, a 
whole ocean that makes two different countries of them both. 

From this false position, which Diard falsified yet further, 
grave misfortunes arose. Perhaps there is a useful lesson to 
be learned by tracing the chain of interdependent facts that 
imperceptibly brought about the catastrophe of the story. 

In the first place, Parisian scoffers could not see the pictures 
that adorned the late quartermaster’s mansion without a sig¬ 
nificant smile. The recently purchased masterpieces were all 
condemned by the unspoken slur cast upon the pictures that 
had been the spoils of war in Spain ; by this slur, self-love 
avenged itself for the involuntary offense of Diard’s wealth. 
Juana understood the meaning of some of the ambiguous com¬ 
pliments in which the French excel. Acting upon her advice, 
therefore, her husband sent the Spanish pictures back to Tara- 
gona. But the world of Paris, determined to put the worsi 
construction on the matter, said, That fellow Diard is 
shrewd; he has sold his pictures,” and the good folk con¬ 
tinued to believe that the paintings which still hung on the 
walls had not been honestly come by. Then some ill-natured 
women inquired how a Diard had come to marry a young wife 


THE MARANAS. 


269 


SO rich and so beautiful. Comments followed, endless absurdi¬ 
ties were retailed, after the manner of Paris. If Juana rose 
above it all, even above the scandal, and met with nothing 
but the respect due to her pure and devout life, that respect 
ended with her, and was not accorded to her husband. Her 
shining eyes glanced over her rooms, and her woman’s clear¬ 
sightedness brought her nothing but pain. And yet—the 
disparagement was quite explicable. Military men, for all 
the virtues with which romance endows them, could not for¬ 
give the quondam quartermaster for his wealth and his deter¬ 
mination to cut a figure in Paris, and for that very reason. 

There is a world in Paris that lies between the farthest 
house in the Faubourg Saint-Germain on the one hand, and 
the last mansion in the Rue Saint-Lazare on the other; be¬ 
tween the rising ground of the Luxembourg and the heights 
of Montmartre; a world that dresses and gossips, dresses to 
go out, and goes out to gossip; a world of petty and great 
airs; a world of mean and poor ambitions, masquerading in 
insolence ; a world of envy and of fawning arts. It is made 
up of gilded rank, and rank that has lost its gilding, of young 
and old, of nobility of the fourth century and titles of yes¬ 
terday, of those who laugh at the expense of a parvenu^ and 
others who fear to be contaminated by him, of men eager for 
the downfall of a power, though none the less they will bow 
the knee to it if it holds its own ; and all these ears hear, and 
all these tongues repeat, and all these minds are informed in 
the course of an evening of the birtliplace, education, and 
previous history of each new aspirant for its high-places. If 
there is no High Court of Justice in this exalted sphere, it 
boasts the most ruthless of procurors-general, an intangible 
public opinion that dooms the victim and carries out the sen¬ 
tence, that accuses and brands the delinquent. Do not hope 
to hide anything from this tribunal, tell everything at once 
yourself, for it is determined to go to the bottom of every¬ 
thing, and knows everything. Do not seek to understand the 


270 


THE MARANAS. 


mysterious operation by which intelligence is flashed from 
place to place, so that a story, a scandal, or a piece of news 
is known everywhere simultaneously in the twinkling of an 
eye. Do not ask who set the machinery in motion ; it is a 
social mystery, no observer can do more than watch its phe¬ 
nomena, and its working is rapid beyond belief. A single 
example shall suffice. The murder of the Due de Berri, at 
the opera, was known in the farthest part of the He Saint- 
Louis ten minutes after the crime was committed. The opin¬ 
ion of the Sixth Regiment of the line concerning Diard per¬ 
meated this world of Paris on the very evening of his first ball. 

So Diard himself could accomplish nothing. Henceforward 
his wife, and his wife alone, might make a way for him. 
Strange portent of a strange civilization ! If a man can do 
nothing by himself in Paris, he has still some chance of rising 
in the world if his wife is young and clever. There are 
women, weak to all appearance, invalids who, without rising 
from their sofas or leaving their rooms, make their influence 
felt in society, and, by bringing countless secret springs into 
play, gain for their husbands the position which their own 
vanity desires. But Juana, whose girlhood had been spent in 
the quaint simplicity of the narrow house in Taragona, knew 
nothing of the corruption, the baseness, or the opportunities 
afforded by life in Paris; she looked out upon it with girlish 
curiosity, and learned from it no worldly wisdom save the 
lessons taught her by her wounded pride and susceptibilities. 
Juana, moreover, possessed the quick instinct of a maiden 
heart, and was as swift to anticipate an impression as a sensi¬ 
tive plant. The lonely girl had become a woman all at once. 
She saw that if she endeavored to compel society to honor 
her husband, it must be after the Spanish fashion, of telling a 
lie, carbine in hand. Did not her own constant watchfulness 
tell her how necessary her manifold precautions were? A gulf 
yawned for Diard between the failure to make himself re¬ 
spected and the opposite danger of being respected but too 


THE MARANAS. 


271 


much. Then as suddenly as before, when she had foreseen 
her life, there came a revelation of the world to her; she 
beheld on all sides the vast extent of an irreparable mis¬ 
fortune. Then came the tardy recognition of her husband’s 
peculiar weaknesses, his total unfitness to play the parts he 
had assigned to himself, the incoherency of his ideas, the 
mental incapacity to grasp this society as a whole, or to com¬ 
prehend the subtleties that are all-important there. Would 
not tact effect more for a man in his position than force of 
character ? But the tact that never fails is perhaps the greatest 
of all forces. 

So far from effacing the blot upon the Diard scutcheon, the 
major was at no little pains to make matters worse. For 
instance, as it had not occurred to him that the Empire was 
passing through a phase that required careful study, he tried, 
though he was only a major, to obtain an appointment as pre¬ 
fect. At that time almost every one believed in Napoleon ; 
his favor had increased the importance of every post. The 
prefectures, those empires on a small scale, could only be 
filled by men with great names, by the gentlemen of the 
household of his majesty the Emperor and King. The pre¬ 
fects by this time were Grand Viziers. These minions of the 
great man laughed at Major Diard’s artless ambitions, and he 
was fain to solicit a sub-prefecture. His modest pretensions 
were ludicrously disproportioned to his vast wealth. After 
this ostentatious display of luxury, how could the millionaire 
leave the royal splendors of his house in Paris for Issoudun or 
Savenay? Would it not be a descent unworthy of his for¬ 
tunes? Juana, who had come to understand our laws and 
the manners and customs of our administration, too late 
enlightened her husband. Diard, in his desperation, went 
begging to all the powers that be; but Diard met with 
nothing but rebuffs, no way was open to him. Then people 
judged him as the government had judged him, and passed 
his own verdict upon himself. Diard had been badly wounded 


272 


THE MARANAS. 


on the field of battle, and Diard had not been decorated. 
The quartermaster, who had gained wealth, but no esteem, 
found no place under the government, and society quite 
logically refused him the social position to which he had 
aspired. In short, in his own house the unfortunate man con¬ 
tinually felt that his wife was his superior. He had come to 
feel it in spite of the velvet glove” (if the metaphor is not 
too bold) that disguised from her husband the supremacy that 
astonished her herself, while she felt humiliated by it. It 
produced its effect upon Diard at last. 

A man who plays a losing game like this is bound to lose 
heart, and to grow either a greater or a worse man for it; 
Diard’s courage, or his passion, was sure to diminish, after 
repeated blows dealt to his self-love, and he made mistake 
upon mistake. From the first everything had been against 
him, even his own habits and his own character. The vices 
and virtues of the impulsive Provencal were equally patent. 
The fibres of his nature were like harp-strings, and every old 
friend had a place in his heart. He was as prompt to relieve 
a comrade in abject poverty as the distress of another of high 
rank; in short, he never forgot a friend, and filled his gilded 
rooms with poor wretches down on their luck. Beholding 
which things, the general of the old stamp (a species that will 
soon be extinct) was apt to greet Diard in an off-hand fashion, 
and address him with a patronizing, “ Well, my dear fellow ! ” 
when they met. If the generals of the Empire concealed 
their insolence beneath an assumption of a soldier’s bluff 
familiarity, the few people of fashion whom Diard met showed 
him the polite and well-bred contempt against which a self- 
made man is nearly always powerless. Diard’s behavior and 
speech, like his half-Italian accent, his dress, and everything 
about him, combined to lower him in the eyes of ordinary 
minds; for the unwritten code of good manners and good 
taste is a binding tradition that only the greatest power can 
shake off. Such is the way of the world. 


THE MARANAS. 


273 


These details give a very imperfect idea of Juana’s martyr¬ 
dom. The pangs were endured one by one. Every social 
species contributed its pin-prick, and hers was a soul that 
would have welcomed dagger-thrusts in preference. It was 
intolerably painful to watch Diard receiving insults that he 
did not feel, insults that Juana must feel though they were not 
meant for her. A final and dreadful illumination came at last 
for her; it cast a light upon the future, and she knew all the 
sorrows that it held in store. She had seen already that her 
husband was quite incapable of mounting to the highest 
rung of the social ladder, but now she saw the inevitable 
depths to which he must fall when he should lose heart; and 
then a feeling of pity for Diard came over her. 

The future that lay before her was very dark. Juana had 
never ceased to feel an overhanging dread of some evil, 
though whence it should come she knew not. This presenti¬ 
ment haunted her inmost soul, as contagion hovers in the air; 
but she was able to hide her anguish with smiles. She had 
reached the point when she no longer thought of herself. 

Juana used her influence to persuade Diard to renounce his 
social ambitions, pointing out to him as a refuge the peaceful 
and gracious life of the domestic hearth. All their troubles 
came from without; why should they not shut out the world ? 
In his own home Diard would find peace and respect; he 
should reign there. She felt that she had courage enough to 
undertake the trying task of making him happy, this man dis¬ 
satisfied with himself. Her energy had increased with the 
difficulties of her life ; she had within her the heroic spirit 
needed by a woman in her position, and felt the stirrings of 
those religious aspirations which are cherished by the guardian 
angel appointed to watch over a Christian soul, for this poetic 
superstitious fancy is an allegory that expresses the idea of the 
two natures within us. 

Diard renounced his ambitions, closed his house, and 
literally shut himself up in it, if it is allowable to make use 
18 


274 


THE MARANAS. 


of so familiar a phrase. But therein lay the danger. Diard 
was one of those centrifugal souls who must always be moving 
about. The luckless soldier’s turn of mind was such that no 
sooner had he arrived in a place than this restless instinct 
forthwith drove him to depart. Natures of this kind have but 
one end in life; they must come and go unceasingly like the 
wheels spoken of in the Scriptures. It may have been that 
Diard would fain have escaped from himself. He was not 
weary of Juana; she had given him no cause to blame her, 
but with possession his passion for her had grown less absorb¬ 
ing, and his character asserted itself again. 

Thenceforward his moments of despondency came more 
frequently; he gave way more often to his quick southern 
temper. The more virtuous and irreproachable a woman is, 
the more a man delights to find her in fault, if only to 
demonstrate his titular superiority ; but if by chance she com¬ 
pels his respect, he must needs fabricate faults, and so between 
the husband and wife nothings are exaggerated and trifles be¬ 
come mountains. But Juana’s meek patience and gentle¬ 
ness, untinged with the bitterness that women can infuse into 
their submission, gave no handle to this fault-finding of set 
purpose, the most unkind of all. Hers was, moreover, one of 
those noble natures for whom it is impossible to fail in duty; 
her pure and holy life shone in those eyes with the martyr’s 
expression in them that haunted the imagination. Diard first 
grew weary, then he chafed, and ended by finding this lofty 
virtue an intolerable yoke. His wife’s discretion left him no 
room for violent sensations, and he craved excitement. Thou¬ 
sands of such dramas lie hidden away in the souls of men and 
women, beneath the uninteresting surface of apparently simple 
and commonplace lives. It is difl&cult to choose an example 
from among the many scenes that last for so short a time, and 
leave such ineffaceable traces in a life ; scenes that are almost 
always precursors of the calamity that is written in the destiny 
of most marriages. Still one scene may be described, because 


THE MARANAS. 


275 


it sharply marks the first beginnings of a misunderstanding 
between these two, and may in some degree explain the catas¬ 
trophe of the story. 

Juana had two children; luckily for her, they were both 
boys. The oldest was born seven months after her marriage ; 
he was named Juan, and was like his mother. Two years 
after they came to Paris her second son was born ; he re¬ 
sembled Diard and Juana, but he was more like Diard, whose 
names he bore. Juana had given the most tender care to 
little Francisco. For the five years of his life his mother was 
absorbed in this child; he had more than his share of kisses 
and caresses and playthings; and besides and beyond all 
this, his mother’s penetrating eyes watched him continually. 
Juana studied his character even in the cradle, noticing heed- 
fully his cries and movements, that she might direct his educa¬ 
tion. Juana seemed to have but that one child. The Pro¬ 
vencal, seeing that Juan was almost neglected, began to take 
notice of the older boy. He would not ask himself whether 
the little one was the offspring of the short-lived love affair to 
which he owed Juana, and by a piece of rare flattery made of 
Juan his Benjamin. Of all the race inheritance of passions 
which preyed upon her, Mme. Diard gave way but to one—a 
mother’s love; she loved her children with the same vehe¬ 
mence and intensity that La Marana had shown for her child 
in the first part of this story; but to this love she added a 
gracious delicacy of feeling, a quick and keen comprehension 
of the social virtues that it had been her pride to practice, in 
which she had found her recompense. The secret thought of 
the conscientious fulfillment of the duties of motherhood had 
been a crude element of poetry that left its impress on La 
Marana’s life; but Juana could be a mother openly ; it was 
her hourly consolation. Her own mother had been virtuous 
as other women are criminal, by stealth; she had stolen her 
illicit happiness, she had not known all the sweetness of secure 
possession. But Juana, whose life of virtue was as dreary as 


276 


THE MARA NAS. 


her mother’s life of sin, knew every hour the ineffable joys for 
which that mother had longed in vain. For her, as for La 
Marana, motherhood summed up all earthly affection, and 
both the Maranas from opposite causes had but this one com¬ 
fort in their desolation. Perhaps Juana’s love was the stronger, 
because, shut out from all other love, her children became all 
in all to her, and because a noble passion has this in common 
with vice: it grows by what it feeds upon. The mother and 
the gambler are alike insatiable. 

Juana was touched by the generous pardon extended over 
Juan’s head by Diard’s fatherly affection, and thenceforward 
the relations between husband and wife were changed; the 
interest which Diard’s Spanish wife had taken in him from a 
sense of duty only became a deep and sincere feeling. Had 
he been less inconsequent in his life, if fickleness and spas¬ 
modic changes of feeling on his part had not quenched that 
flicker of timid but real sympathy, Juana must surely have 
loved him; but, unluckily, Diard’s character belonged to the 
quick-witted southern type, that has no continuity in its ideas; 
such men will be capable of heroic actions over night, and 
sink into nonentities on the morrow; often they are made to 
suffer for their virtues, often their worst defects contribute to 
their success: and for the rest, they are great when their 
good qualities are pressed into the service of an unflagging 
will. For two years Diard bad been a prisoner in his home, 
a prisoner bound by the sweetest of all chains. He lived, 
almost against his will, beneath the influence of a wife who 
kept him amused, and was always bright and cheerful for him, 
a wife who devoted all her powers of coquetry to beguiling 
him into the ways of virtue; and yet all her ingenuity could 
not deceive him, and he knew this was not love. 

Just about that time a murder caused a great sensation in 
Paris. A captain of the armies of the Republic had killed 
a woman in a paroxysm of debauchery. Diard told the story 
to Juana when he came home to dine. The officer, he said, 


THE MARANAS. 


277 


had taken his own life to avoid the ignominy of a trial and 
the infamous death of a criminal. At first Juana could not 
understand the reason for his conduct, and her husband was 
obliged to explain to her the admirable provision of the 
French law, which takes no proceedings against the dead. 

“But, papa, didn’t you tell us the other day that the King 
can pardon anybody? ” asked Francisco. 

The King can only grant said Juan, nettled. 

Diard and Juana watched this little scene with very different 
feeling. The tears of happiness in Juana’s eyes as she glanced 
at her oldest boy let her husband see with fatal clearness 
into the real secrets of that hitherto inscrutable heart. Her 
older boy was Juana’s own child; Juana knew his nature; 
she was sure of him and of his future; she worshiped him, 
and her great love was a secret known only to her child and 
to God. Juan, in his secret heart, gladly endured his mother’s 
sharp speeches. What if she seemed to frown upon him in 
the presence of his father and brother, when she showered 
passionate kisses upon him when they were alone? Francisco 
was Diard’s child, and Juana’s care meant that she wished to 
check the growth of his father’s faults in him and to develop 
his good qualities. 

Juana, unconscious that she had spoken too plainly in that 
glance, took little Francisco on her knee; and, her sweet 
voice faltering somewhat with the gladness that Juan’s answer 
had caused her, gave the younger boy the teaching suited to 
his childish mind. 

“His training requires great care,” the father said, speak¬ 
ing to Juana. 

“Yes,” she answered simply. 

“But Juan!'' 

The tone in which the two words were uttered startled Mme. 
Diard. She looked up at her husband. 

“Juan was born perfection,” he added, and having thus 
delivered himself, he sat down and looked gloomily at his 


278 


THE MAR A NAS. 


wife. She was silent, so he went on, “ You love one of yvur 
children better than the other.” 

‘‘You know it quite well,” she said. 

“No!” returned Diard. “Until this moment I did not 
know which of them you loved the most.” 

“ But neither of them has as yet caused me any sorrow,” 
she answered quickly. 

“No, but which of them has given you more joys?” he 
asked still more quickly. 

“I have not kept any reckoning of them.” 

“ Women are very deceitful 1 ” cried Diard. “ Do you dare 
to tell me that Juan is not the darling of your heart?” 

“ And if he were,” she said, with gentle dignity, “do you 
mean that it would be a misfortune? ” 

“You have never loved me! If you had chosen, I might 
have won kingdoms for you with my sword. You know all 
that I have tried to do, sustained by one thought—a longing 
that you might care for me. Ah ! if you had but loved 
me-” 

“A woman who loves,” said Juana, “lives in solitude far 
from the world. Is not that what we are doing? ” 

“Oh ! I know, Juana, that you are never in the wrong.” 

The words, spoken with such intense bitterness, brought 
about a coolness between them that lasted the rest of their lives. 

On the morrow of that fatal day, Diard sought out one of 
his old cronies, and with him sought distraction at the gaming¬ 
table. Unluckily, he won a great deal of money, and he 
began to play regularly. Little by little he slipped back into 
his old dissipated life. After a short time he no longer dined 
at home. A few months were spent in the enjoyment of the 
first pleasures of freedom ; he made up his mind that he 
would not part with it, left the large apartments of the house 
to his wife, and took up his abode separately on the entresol. 
By the end of the year Diard and Juana only met once a 
day—at breakfast-time. 



THE MARANAS. 


279 


In a few words, like all gamblers, he had runs of good and 
bad luck; but as he was reluctant to touch his capital, he 
wished to have entire control of their income, and his wife 
accordingly ceased to take any part in the management of the 
household economy. Mistrust had succeeded to the bound¬ 
less confidence that he had once placed in her. As to money 
matters, which had formerly been arranged by both husband 
and wife, he adopted the plan of a monthly allowance for her 
own expenses; they settled the amount of it together in the 
last of the confidential talks that form one of the most attrac¬ 
tive charms of marriage. 

The barrier of silence between two hearts is. a real divorce, 
accomplished on the day when husband and wife say we no 
longer. When that day came, Juana knew that she was no 
longer a wife, but a mother; she was not unhappy, and did 
not seek to guess the reason of the misfortune. It was a 
great pity. Children consolidate, as it were, the lives of 
their parents, and the life that her husband led apart was to 
weave sadness and anguish for others as well as for Juana. 
Diard lost no time in making use of his newly-regained lib¬ 
erty ; he played high, and lost and won enormous sums. He 
was a good and bold player, and gained a great reputation. 
The respect which he had failed to win in society in the days 
of the Empire was accorded now to the wealth that was risked 
upon a green table, to a talent for all and any of the games 
of chance of that period. Ambassadors, financiers, men with 
large fortunes, jaded pleasure-seekers in quest of excitement 
and extreme sensations admired Diard’s play at their clubs; 
they rarely asked him to their houses, but they all played with 
him. 

Diard became the fashion. Once or twice during the 
winter his independent spirit led him to give a fSte to return 
the courtesies that he had received, and by glimpses Juana 
saw something of society again ; there was a brief return of 
balls and banquets, of luxury and brilliantly-lighted rooms; 


280 


THE MARANAS. 


but all these things she regarded as a sort of duty levied 
upon her happiness and solitude. 

The queen of these high festivals appeared in them like 
some creature fallen from an unknown world. Her simplicity 
that nothing had spoiled, a certain maidenliness of soul with 
which the changed conditions of her life had invested her, 
her beauty, her unaffected modesty, won sincere admiration. 
But Juana saw few women among her guests; and it was plain 
to her mind that if her husband had ordered his life differ¬ 
ently without taking her into his confidence, he had not risen 
in the esteem of the world. 

Diard was not always lucky. In three years he had squan¬ 
dered three-fourths of his fortune ; but he drew from his pas¬ 
sion for gambling sufficient energy to satisfy it. He had a 
large circle of acquaintance, and was hand and glove with 
certain swindlers on the Stock Exchange—gentry who, since 
the Revolution, have established the principle that robbery 
on a large scale is a mere peccadillo^ transferring to the lan¬ 
guage of the counting-house the brazen epithets of the license 
of the eighteenth century. 

Diard became a speculator, engaged in the peculiar kinds 
of business described as “shady ” in the slang of the Palais. 
He managed to get hoW of poor wretches ignorant of com¬ 
mercial red-tape, and weary of everlasting proceedings in 
liquidation ; he would buy up their claims on the debtor’s 
estate for a small sum, arrange the matter with the assignees 
in the course of an evening, and divide the spoil with the 
latter. When liquifiable debts were not to be found, he looked 
out for floating debts ; he unearthed and revived claims in 
abeyance in Europe and America and uncivilized countries. 
When at the Restoration the debts incurred by the princes, 
the Republic, and the Empire were all paid, he took commis¬ 
sions on loans, on contracts for public works and enterprises 
of all kinds. In short, he committed legal robbery, like 
many another carefully masked delinquent behind the scenes 


THE MARANAS. 


281 


in the theatre of politics. Such thefts, if perpetrated by the 
light of a street lamp, would send the luckless offender to the 
hulks; but there is a virtue in the glitter of chandeliers and 
gilded ceilings that absolves the crimes committed beneath 
them. 

Diard forestalled and regrated sugars; he sold places; to 
him belongs the credit of the invention of the “ warming- 
pan ; ” he installed lay-figures in lucrative posts that must be 
held for a time to secure still better positions. Then he fell 
to meditating on bounties; he studied the loop-holes of the 
law, and carried on contraband trades against which no pro¬ 
vision had been made. This traffic in high-places may be 
briefly described as a sort of commission agency; he received 
‘‘so much per cent." on the purchase of fifteen votes which 
passed in a single night from the benches on the left to the 
benches on the right of the legislative chamber. In these 
days such things are neither misdemeanors nor felony ; exploit¬ 
ing industry, the art of government, financial genius—these 
are the names by which they are called. 

Public opinion put Diard in the pillory, where more than 
one clever man stood already to keep him company; there, 
indeed, you will find the aristocracy of this kind of talent— 
the upper chamber of civilized rascality. 

Diard, therefore, was no commonplace gambler, no vulgar 
spendthrift who ends his career, in melodramas, as a beggar. 
Above a certain social altitude that kind of gambler is not to 
be found. In these days a bold scoundrel of this kind will 
die gloriously in the harness of vice in all the trappings of 
success: he will blow out his brains in a coach and six, and 
all that has been intrusted to him vanishes with him. Diard’s 
talent determined him not to buy remorse too cheaply, and he 
joined this privileged class. He learned all the springs of 
government, made himself acquainted with all the secrets and 
the weaknesses of men in office, and held his own in the 
fiery furnace into which he had cast himself, 

iv 


282 


THE MARANAS. 


Mme. Diard knew nothing of the infernal life that her 
husband led. She was well content to be neglected, and did 
not ponder overmuch the reasons for his neglect. Her time 
was too well filled. She devoted all the money that she had 
to the education of her children; a very clever tutor was 
engaged for them, besides various masters. She meant to 
make men of her boys, to develop in them the faculty of 
reasoning clearly, but not at the expense of their imaginative 
powers. Nothing affected her now save through her children, 
and her own colorless life depressed her no longer. Juan and 
Francisco were for her what children are for a time for many 
mothers—a sort of expansion of her own existence. Diard 
had come to be a mere accident in her life. Since Diard had 
ceased to be a father and the head of the family, nothing 
bound Juana to her husband any longer, save a regard for 
appearances demanded by social conventions; yet she brought 
up her children to respect their father, shadowy and unreal as 
that fatherhood had become; indeed, her husband’s continual 
absence from home helped her to maintain the fiction of his 
high character. If Diard had lived in the house, all Juana’s 
efforts must have been in vain. Her children were too quick 
and bright not to judge their father, and this process is a 
moral parricide. 

At length, however, Juana’s indifference changed to a feel¬ 
ing of dread. She felt that sooner or later her husband’s 
manner of life must affect the children’s future. Day by day 
that old presentiment of coming evil gathered definiteness and 
strength. On the rare occasions when Juana saw her hus¬ 
band, she would glance at his hollow cheeks, at his face 
grown haggard with the vigils he kept, and wrinkled with 
violent emotions; and Diard almost trembled before the clear, 
penetrating eyes. At such times her husband’s assumed gaiety 
alarmed her even more than the dark look that his face wore 
in repose, when for a moment he happened to forget the part 
that he was playing. He feared his wife as the criminal fears 


THE MARANAS. 


283 


the headsman. Juana saw in him a disgrace on her children’s 
name; and Diard dreaded her, she was like some passionless 
Vengeance, a Justice v/ith unchanging brows, with the arm 
that should one day strike always suspended above him. 

One day, about fifteen years after his marriage, Diard found 
himself without resources. He owed a hundred thousand 
crowns, and was possessed of a bare hundred thousand francs. 
His mansion (all that he possessed beside ready money) was 
mortgaged beyond its value. A few more days, and the 
prestige of enormous wealth must fade; and when those days 
of grace had expired, no helping hand would be stretched 
out, no purse would be open for him. Nothing but unlooked- 
for luck could save him now from the slough into which he 
must fall; and he would but sink the deeper in it, men would 
scorn him the more because for a while they had estimated 
him at more than his just value. 

Very opportunely, therefore, he learned that with the 
beginning of the season diplomatists and foreigners of dis¬ 
tinction flocked t© watering-places in the Pyrenees, that play 
ran high at these resorts, and that the visitors were doubtless 
well able to pay their losings. So he determined to set out at 
once for the Pyrenees. He had no mind to leave his wife in 
Paris; some of his creditors might enlighten her as to his 
awkward position, and he wished to keep it secret, so he took 
Juana and the two children. He would not allow the tutor 
to go with them, and made some difficulties about Juana’s 
maid, who, with a single manservant, composed their travel¬ 
ing suite. His tone was curt and peremptory; his energy 
seemed to have returned to him. This hasty journey sent a 
shiver of dread to Juana’s soul ; her penetration was at fault, 
she could not imagine the why and wherefore of their leaving 
Paris. Her husband seemed to be in high spirits on the way; 
and during the time spent together perforce in the traveling 
carriage, he took more and more notice of the children, and 
was more kindly to the children’s mother. And yet—every 


284 


THE MARANAS. 


day brought new and dark forebodings for Juana, the fore¬ 
bodings of a mother’s heart. These inward warnings, even 
when there is no apparent reason for them, are seldom vain, 
and the veil that hides the future grows thin for a mother’s 
eyes. 

Diard took a house, not large, but very nicely furnished, 
situated in one of the quietest parts of Bordeaux. It hap¬ 
pened to be a corner house with a large garden, surrounded 
on three sides by streets, and on the fourth by the wall of a 
neighboring dwelling. Diard paid the rent in advance, and 
installed his wife and family, leaving Juana fifty louis, a sum 
barely sufficient to meet the housekeeping expenses for three 
months. Mme. Diard made no comment on this unwonted 
niggardliness. When her husband told her that he was about 
to go to the Baths, and that she was to remain in Bordeaux, 
she made up her mind that the children should learn the 
Spanish and Italian languages thoroughly, and that they 
should read with her the great masterpieces of either tongue. 

With this object in view, Juana’s life should be retired 
and simple, and in consequence her expenses would be 
few. Her own woman waited upon them; and, to simplify 
the housekeeping, she arranged on the morrow of Diard’s 
departure to have their meals sent in from a restaurant. 
Everything was provided for until her husband’s return, and 
she had no money left. Her amusements must consist in occa¬ 
sional walks with the children. She was now a woman of thirty- 
three ; her beauty had developed to its fullest extent, she was 
in the full splendor of her maturity. Scarcely had she ap¬ 
peared in Bordeaux before people talked of nothing but the 
lovely Spanish lady. She received a first love-letter, and 
thenceforth confined her walks to her own garden. 

At first Diard had a run of luck at the Baths. He won 
three hundred thousand francs in two months; but it never 
occurred to him to send any money to his wife, he meant to 
keep as large a sum as possible by him, and to play for yet 


THE MARANAS. 


285 


higher stakes. Towards the end of the last month the Marquis 
di Montefiore came to the Baths, preceded by a reputation for 
a fine figure and great wealth, for the match that he had made 
with an English lady of family, and most of all for a passion 
for gambling. Diard waited for his old comrade in arms, to 
add the spoils to his winnings. A gambler with something 
like four hundred thousand francs at his back can command 
most things; Diard felt confident in his luck, and renewed 
his acquaintance with Montefiore. That gentleman received 
him coldly, but they played together, and Diard lost every¬ 
thing. 

“Montefiore, my dear fellow,” said the sometime quarter¬ 
master, after a turn round the room in which he had ruined 
himself, “ I owe you a hundred thousand francs; but I have 
left my money at Bordeaux, where my wife is staying.” 

As a matter of fact, Diard had notes for the amount in his 
pockets at that moment; but, with the self-possession of a man 
accustomed to take in all the possibilities of a situation at a 
glance, he still hoped something from the incalculable chances 
of the gaming-table. Montefiore had expressed a desire to 
see something of Bordeaux; and. if Diard were to settle at 
once with him, he would have nothing left, and could 
not have his “ revenge.” A “ revenge ” will sometimes more 
than make good all previous losses. All these burning hopes 
depended on the answer that the Marquis might give. 

“Let it stand, my dear fellow,” said Montefiore; “we will 
go to Bordeaux together. I am rich enough now in all con¬ 
science; why should I take an old comrade’s money? ” 

Three days later, Diard and the Italian were at Bordeaux. 
Montefiore offered the Provengal his revenge. In the course 
of an evening, which Diard began by paying down the hun¬ 
dred thousand francs, he lost two hundred thousand more 
upon parole. He was as light-hearted over his losses as if he 
could swim in gold. It was eleven o’clock, and a glorious 
night, surely Montefiore must wish to breathe the fresh air 


286 


THE MARANAS. 


under the open sky and to take a walk to cool down a little 
after the excitement of play ; Diard suggested that the Italian 
should accompany him to his house and take a cup of tea 
there when the money was paid over. 

“ But Mme. Diard ! ” queried Montefiore. 

“ Pshaw ! ” answered the Provencal. 

They went downstairs together; but, before leaving the 
house, Diard went into the dining-room, asked for a glass of 
water, and walked about the room as he waited for it. In 
this way he managed to secrete a tiny steel knife with a handle 
of mother-of-pearl, such as is used at dessert for fruit; the 
thing had not yet been put away in its place. 

‘‘Where do you live?” asked Montefiore, as they crossed 
the court; “I must leave word, so as to have the carriage 
sent round for me.” 

Diard gave minute directions. 

“ Of course, I am perfectly safe as long as I am with you, 
you see,” said Montefiore in a low voice, as he took Diard’s 
arm; “ but if I came back by myself, and some scamp were 
to follow me, I should be worth killing.” 

“ Then have you money about you ? ” 

“Oh 1 next to nothing,” said the cautious Italian, “only 
my winnings. But they would make a pretty fortune for a 
penniless rascal; he might take brevet rank as an honest man 
afterwards for the rest of his life, that I know.” 

Diard took the Italian into a deserted street. He had 
noticed the gateway of a single house in it at the end of a 
sort of avenue of trees, and that there were high dark walls 
on either side. Just as they reached the end of this road he 
had the audacity to ask his friend, in soldierly fashion, to 
walk on. Montefiore understood Diard’s meaning, and turned 
to go with him. Scarcely had they set foot in the shadow, 
when Diard sprang like a tiger upon the Marquis, tripped 
him up, boldly set his foot on his victim’s throat, and plunged 
the knife again and again into his heart, till the blade snapped 


THE MAR A NAS. 


287 


off short in his body. Tlien lie searched Montefiore, took his 
money, his pocket-book, and everything that the Marquis had. 

But though Diard had set about his work in a frenzy that 
left him perfectly clear-headed, and completed it with the 
deftness of a pickpocket; though he had taken his victim 
adroitly by surprise, Montefiore had had time to shriek 
“ Murder ! ” once or twice, a shrill, far-reaching cry that 
must have sent a thrill of horror through many sleepers, and 
his dying groans were fearful to hear. 

Diard did not know that even as they turned into the 
avenue a crowd of people returning home from the theatre 
had reached the upper end of the street. They had heard 
Montefiore’s dying cries, though the Provencal had tried to 
stifle the sounds, never relaxing the pressure of his foot upon 
the murdered man’s throat until at last they ceased. 

The high walls still echoed with dying groans which guided 
the crowd to the spot whence they came. The sound of 
many feet filled the avenue and rang through Diard’s brain. 
The murderer did not lose his head ; he came out from under 
the trees, and walked very quietly along the street, as if he 
had been drawn thither by curiosity and saw that he had 
come too late to be of any use. He even turned to make 
sure of the distance that separated him from the new-comers, 
and saw them all rush into the avenue, save one man, who not 
unnaturally stood still to watch Diard’s movements. 

“There he lies ! There he lies ! ” shouted voices from the 
avenue. They had caught sight of Montefiore’s dead body in 
front of the great house. The gateway was shut fast, and 
after diligent search they could not find the murderer in the 
alley. 

As soon as he heard the shout, Diard knew that he had got 
the start; he seemed to have the strength of a lion in him 
and the fleetness of a stag; he began to run^ nay, he flew. 
He saw, or fancied that he saw, a second crowd at the other 
end of the road, and darted down a side street. But even as 


288 


THE MARA HAS. 


he fled, windows were opened, and rows of heads were thrust 
out, lights and shouting issued from every door; to Diard, 
running for dear life, it seemed as if he were rushing through 
a tumult of cries and swaying lights. As he fled straight 
along the road before him, his legs stood him in such good 
stead that he left the crowd behind; but he could not keep 
out of sight of the windows, nor avoid the watchful eyes that 
traversed the length and breadth of a street faster than he 
could fly. 

In the twinkling of an eye, soldiers, gendarmes, and house¬ 
holders were all astir. Some in their zeal had gone to wake 
up commissaries of police, others stood by the dead body. 
The alarm spread out into the suburbs in the direction of the 
fugitive (whom it followed like a conflagration from street to 
street) and into the heart of the town, where it reached the 
authorities. Diard heard as in a dream the hurrying feet, the 
yells of a whole horror-stricken city. But his ideas were still 
clear; he still preserved his presence of mind, and he rubbed 
his hands against the walls as he ran. 

At last he reached the garden wall of his own house. He 
thought that he had thrown his pursuers off the scent. The 
place was perfectly silent save for the far-off murmur of the 
city, scarcely louder there than the sound of the sea. He 
dipped his hands into a runnel of clear water and drank. 
Then, looking about him, he saw a heap of loose stones by 
the roadside, and hastened to bury his spoils beneath it, act¬ 
ing on some dim notion such as crosses a criminal’s mind 
when he has not yet found a consistent tale to account for 
his actions, and hopes to establish his innocence by lack of 
proofs against him. When this was accomplished, he tried to 
look serene and calm, forced a smile, and knocked gently at 
his own door, hoping that no one had seen him. He looked 
up at the house front and saw a light in his wife’s windows. 
And then in his agitation of spirit visions of Juana’s peace¬ 
ful life rose before him ; he saw her sitting there in the candle- 


THE MARANAS. 


289 


light with her children on either side of her, and the vision 
smote his brain like a blow from a hammer. The waiting- 
woman opened the door, Diard entered, and hastily shut it to 
again. He dared to breathe more freely, but he remembered 
that he was covered with perspiration, and sent the maid up 
to Juana, while he stayed below in the darkness. He wiped 
his face with a handkerchief and set his clothes in order, as a 
coxcomb smooths his coat before calling upon a pretty woman ; 
then for a moment he stood in the moonlight examining his 
hands; he passed them over his face, and with unspeakable 
joy found that there was no trace of blood upon him, doubt¬ 
less his victim’s wounds had bled internally. 

He went up to Juana’ sroom, and his manner was as quiet 
and composed as if he had come home after the theatre, to 
sleep. As he climbed the stairs, he could think over his 
position, and summed it up in a phrase—he must leave the 
house and reach the harbor. These ideas did not cross his 
brain in words; he saw them written in letters of fire upon 
the darkness. Once down at the harbor, he could lie in 
hiding during the day, and return at night for the treasure; 
then he would creep with it like a rat into the hold of some 
vessel, and leave the port, no one suspecting that he was on 
board. For all these things money was wanted in the first 
place. And he had nothing. The waiting-woman came with 
a light. 

‘^Felicie,” he said, do you not hear that noise? people 
are shouting in the street. Go and find out what it is and let 
me know-” 

His wife in her white dressing-gown was sitting at a table, 
reading Cervantes in Spanish with Francisco and Juan ; the 
two children’s eyes followed the text while their mother read 
aloud. All three of them stopped and looked up at Diard, 
who stood with his hands in his pockets, surprised perhaps by 
the surroundings, the peaceful scene, the fair faces of the 
woman and the children in the softly-lit room. It was like a 
19 



290 


THE MARANAS. 


living picture of a Madonna with her son and the little Saint 
John on either side. 

Juana, I have something to say to you.” 

** What is it ? ” she asked. In her husband’s wan and sallow 
face she read the news of this calamity that she had expected 
daily ; it had come at last. 

<< Nothing, but I should like to speak to you—to you, quite 
alone,” and he fixed his eyes on the two little boys. 

Go to your room, my darlings, and go to bed,” said Juana. 
*‘Say your prayers without me.” 

The two boys went away in silence, with the uninquisitive 
obedience of children who have been well brought up. 

“Dear Juana,” Diard began in coaxing tones, “I left you 
very little money, and I am very sorry for it now. Listen, 
since I relieved you of the cares of your household by giving 
you an allowance, perhaps you may have saved a little money, 
as all women do? ” 

“ No,” answered Juana, “I have nothing. You did not 
allow anything for the expenses of the children’s education. 
I am not reproaching you at all, dear; I only remind you 
that you forgot about it, to explain how it is that I have no 
money. All that you gave me I spent on lessons and mas¬ 
ters-” 

“ That will do ! ” Diard broke in. “ Holy thunder ! time 
is precious. Have you no jewels?” 

“You know quite well that I never wear them.” 

“ Then there is not a sou in the house ! ” cried Diard, like 
a man bereft of his senses. 

“Why do you cry out?” she asked. 

“ Juana,” he began, “ I have just killed a man ! ” 

Juana rushed to the children’s room, and returned, shutting 
all the doors after her. 

“ Your sons must not hear a word of this,” she said ; “ but 
whom can you have fought with?” 

“Montefiore,” he answered. 



THE MAR ANAS. 


291 


“Ah ! ” she said, and a sigh broke from her; “he is the 
one man whom you had a right to kill-” 

“There were plenty of reasons why he should die by my 
hand. But let us lose no time. Money, I want money, in 
God’s name ! They may be on my track. We did not fight, 
Juana, I—I killed him.” 

“Killed him!” she cried. “But how-?” 

“Why, how does one kill a man? He had robbed me 
of all I had at play; and I have taken it back again. Juana, 
since we have no money, you might go now, while everything 
is quiet, and look for my money under the heap of stones at 
the end of the road ; you know the place.” 

“ Then,” said Juana, “ you have robbed him.” 

“What business is it of yours? Fly I must, mustn’t I? 
Have you any money?- They are after me ! ” 

“Who?” 

“ The authorities.’ 

Juana left the room, and came back suddenly. 

“ Here,” she cried, holding out a trinket, but standing at 
a distance from him ; this is Dofia Lagounia’s cross. There 
are four rubies in it, and the stones are very valuable; so I 
have been told. Be quick, fly, fly-why don’t you go?” 

“ Felicie has not come back,” he said in dull amazement. 
“ Can they have arrested her? ” 

Juana dropped the cross on the edge of the table, and 
sprang towards the windows that looked out upon the street. 
Outside in the moonlight she saw a row of soldiers taking their 
places in absolute silence along the wall. She came back 
again ; to all appearance she was perfectly calm. 

“ You have not a minute to lose,” she said to her husband; 
“ you must escape through the garden. Here is the key of 
the little door.” 

A last counsel of prudence led her, however, to give a 
glance over the garden. In the shadows under the trees she 
saw the silvery gleam of the metal rims of the gendarmes’ 






292 


THE MARANAS. 


caps. She even heard a vague murmur of a not far-distant 
crowd; sentinels were keeping back the people gathered 
together by curiosity at the further ends of the streets by 
which the house was approached. 

As a matter of fact, Diard had been seen from the windows 
of the houses; the maidservant had been frightened, and 
afterwards arrested; and, acting on this information, the mil¬ 
itary and the crowd had soon blocked the ends of the streets 
that lay on two sides of the house. A dozen gendarmes, 
coming off duty at the theatres, were posted outside; others 
had climbed the wall, and were searching the garden, a pro¬ 
ceeding authorized by the serious nature of the crime. 

Monsieur,” said Juana, “ it is too late. The whole town 
is aroused.” 

Diard rushed from window to window, with the wild reck¬ 
lessness of a bird that dashes frantically against every pane. 
Juana stood absorbed in her thoughts. 

Where can I hide ? ” he asked. 

He looked at the chimney, and Juana stared at the two 
empty chairs. To her it seemed only a moment since her 
children were sitting there. Just at that moment the gate 
opened, and the courtyard echoed with the sound of many 
footsteps. 

‘‘ Juana, dear Juana, for pity’s sake, tell me what to do.” 

** I will tell you,” she said ; I will save you.” 

Ah ! you will be my good angel! ” 

Again Juana returned with one of Diard’s pistols; she held 
it out to him, and turned her head away. Diard did not take 
it. Juana heard sounds from the courtyard ; they had brought 
in the dead body of the Marquis to confront the murderer. 
She came away from the window and looked at Diard ; he was 
white and haggard; his strength failed him; he made as if he 
would sink into a chair. 

‘‘For your children’s sake,” she said, thrusting the weapon 
into his hands. 





rS 

• • Vi • V' 






.V' 

* ' ^■ 



i ' 






\ 


-';l^ 


^ •- 


A 


t 



/ 


^ / 







« 

( 



• • 


\ 




I ^ 


♦- > 


> 




\ 







V 


» 


t 






































































<< 


Is THAT M. DIARD” 



r.>X 




.1^ 


/p/' 




' , v\ 






tv 


.7i;f * iJw v.r. 

■ ‘•f'j 






>* t 

r 


*-.»»« 


* & . 




»_♦ I* ' 

4t 



■ i 



• V- . :■ % s.<- -St<r-J\Ji*-' .(,; j 

■P'’ A,’ ' > '. ’* ’ '*' *S' ' V .. A' 


H'f 

V't' I':' 

•.■u >■ (■ 


I < 




J v .' ' 

i-«, /' t^L 


< 

1 ;» i. i* 


» ,f • 


^ f} 



',^3U«Ath .U T5.m t\” , 

A A * ^ . 1 . 



f .. 4*.» *-► 





' ■ ', 

A ^ . 


^ ♦ 



. •:■ 

. . n 

;. • 

i; >J 

k' 

■. 

-; ■ 

» 

^ V * 

. , 


% ^ 


-» 

h'f 

r*. '*' 

L if ‘ 

.,*.»• 

^ 

n 

'« 

« 

• 


. 1 . 

• 




•T*-' 

4 

•r 


U' 



THE MARANAS. 


293 


But, my dear Juana, my little Juana, do you really be¬ 
lieve that-? Juana, is there such need of haste ?- I 

would like to kiss you before-” 

The gendarmes were on the stairs. Then Juana took up 
the pistol, held it at Diard’s head ; with a firm grasp on his 
throat she held him tightly in spite of his cries, fired, and let 
the weapon fall to the ground. 

The door was suddenly flung open at that moment. The 
public prosecutor, followed by a magistrate and his clerk, a 
doctor, and the gendarmes, all the instruments of man’s 
justice, appeared upon the scene. 

“ What do you want ? ” she asked. 

“Is that M. Diard?” answered the public prosecutor, 
pointing to the body lying bent double upon the floor. 

“Yes, monsieur.” 

“ Your dress is covered with blood, madame-” 

“ Do you not understand how it is ? ” asked Juana. 

She went over to the little table and sat down there, and 
took up the volume of Cervantes; her face was colorless ; she 
strove to control her inward nervous agitation. 

“ Leave the room,” said the public prosecutor to the gen¬ 
darmes. He made a sign to the magistrate and the doctor, 
and they remained. 

“ Madame, under the circumstances, we can only con¬ 
gratulate you on your husband’s death. If he was carried 
away by passion, at any rate he has died like a soldier, and it 
is vain for justice to pursue him now. Yet little as we may 
desire to intrude upon you at such a time, the law obliges us 
to inquire into a death by violence. Permit us to do our 
duty.” 

“May I change my dress?” she asked, laying down the 
volume. 

“ Yes, madame, but you must bring it here. The doctor 
will doubtless require it-” 

“ It would be too painful to Mme. Diard to be present 




294 


THE MARANAS. 


while I go through my task,” said the doctor, understanding 
the public prosecutor’s suspicions. “Will you permit her, 
gentlemen, to remain in the adjoining room? ” 

The two functionaries approved the kindly doctor’s sug¬ 
gestion, and Felicie went to her mistress. Then the magis¬ 
trate and the public prosecutor spoke together for a while in 
a low voice. It is the unhappy lot of administrators of justice 
to be in duty bound to suspect everybody and everything. 
By dint of imagining evil motives, and every possible com¬ 
bination that they may bring about, so as to discover the 
truth that lurks beneath the most inconsistent actions, it is 
impossible but that their dreadful office should in course of 
time dry up the source of the generous impulses to which 
they may never yield. If the sensibilities of the surgeon who 
explores the mysteries of the body are blunted by degrees, 
what becomes of the inner sensibility of the judge who is 
compelled to probe the intricate recesses of the human con¬ 
science ? Magistrates are the first victims of their profession ; 
their progress is one perpetual mourning for their lost illu¬ 
sions, and the crimes that hang so heavily about the necks 
of criminals weigh no less upon their judges. An old man 
seated in the tribunal of justice is sublime ; but do we not 
shudder to see a young face there ? In this case the magis¬ 
trate was a young man, and it was his duty to say to the 
public prosecutor, “ Was the woman her husband’s accomplice, 
do you think ? Must we take proceedings ? Ought she, in 
your opinion, to be examined ? ” 

By way of reply, the public prosecutor shrugged his shoul¬ 
ders ; apparently it was a matter of indifference. 

“Montcfiore and Diard,” he remarked, “were a pair of 
notorious scamps. The servant-girl knew nothing about the 
crime. We need not go 5iny further.” 

The doctor was making his examination of Diard’s body, 
and dictating his report to the clerk. Suddenly he rushed 
into Juana’s room. 


THE MARANAS. 


S95 


Madame——** 

^ Juana, who had changed her blood-stained dress, confronted 
the doctor. 

‘‘You shot your husband, did you not ? ” he asked, bend¬ 
ing to say the words in her ear. 

“Yes, monsieur,” the Spaniard answered. 

And from circumsiantial evidence'^ (the doctor went on 
dictating) “ we conclude that the said Diard has taken his life 
by his own act. Have you finished?” he asked the clerk 
after a pause. 

“Yes,” answered the scribe. 

The doctor put his signature to the document. Juana 
glanced at him, and could scarcely keep back the tears that, 
for a moment, filled her eyes. 

“ Gentlemen,” she said, and she turned to the public prose¬ 
cutor, “ I am a stranger, a Spaniard. I do not know the law. 
I know no one in Bordeaux. I entreat you to do me this kind¬ 
ness, will you procure me a passport for Spain ? ” 

“ One moment ! ” exclaimed the magistrate. “ Madame, 
what has become of the sum of money that was stolen from 
the Marquis di Montefiore ? ” 

“ M. Diard said something about a heap of stones beneath 
which he had hidien it,” she answered. 

“ Where ? ” 

“ In the street.” 

The two functionaries exchanged glances. Juana’s invol¬ 
untary start was sublime. She appealed to the doctor. 

“ Can they suspect me? ” she said in his ear; “ suspect me 
of some villainy ? The heap of stones is sure to be some¬ 
where at the end of the garden. Go yourself, I beg of you, 
and look for it and find the money.” 

The doctor went, accompanied by the magistrate, and found 
Montefiore’s pocket-book. 

Two days later Juana sold her golden cross to meet the 
expenses of the journey. As she went with her two children 



296 


THE MAR A NAS. 


to the diligence in which they were about to travel to the 
Spanish frontier, some one called her name in the street. It 
was her dying mother, who was being taken to the hospital; 
she had caught a glimpse of her daughter through a slit in the 
curtains of the stretcher on which she lay. Juana bade them 
carry the stretcher into a gateway, and there for the last time 
the mother and daughter met. Low as their voices were 
while they spoke together, Juan overheard these words of fare¬ 
well— 

‘‘ Mother, die in peace ; I have suffered for you all.** 

Paris, November^ 1832. 



THE EXECUTIONER. 


{El V^rdugo.') 

To Martinez de la Rosa. 

Midnight had just sounded from the belfry tower of the 
little town of Menda. A young French officer, leaning over 
the parapet of the long terrace at the further end of the castle 
gardens, seemed to be unusually absorbed in deep thought 
for one who led the reckless life of a soldier; but it must be 
admitted that never was the hour, the scene, and the night 
more favorable to meditation. 

' The blue dome of the cloudless sky of Spain was overhead; 
he was looking out over the coy windings of a lovely valley 
lit by the uncertain starlight and the soft radiance of the 
moon. The officer, leaning against an orange tree in blossom, 
could also see, a hundred feet below him, the town of Menda, 
which seemed to nestle for shelter from the north wind at 
the foot of the crags on which the castle itself was built. He 
turned his head and caught sight of the sea; the moonlit 
waves made a broad frame of silver for the landscape. 

There were lights in the castle windows. The mirth and 
movement of a ball, the sounds of the violins, the laughter of 
the officers and their partners in the dance were borne to¬ 
wards him and blended with the far-off murmur of the waves. 
The cool night had a certain bracing effect upon his frame, 
wearied as he had been by the heat of the day. He seemed 
to bathe in the air, made fragrant by the strong, sweet scent 
of flowers and of aromatic trees in the gardens. 

The castle of Menda belonged to a Spanish grandee, who 
was living in it at that time with his family. All through the 

(297) 


298 


THE EXECUTIONER. 


evening the oldest daughter of the house had watched the 
officer with such a wistful interest that the Spanish lady’s 
conipassionate eyes might well have set the young Frenchman 
dreaming. Clara was beautiful; and although she had three 
brothers and a sister, the broad lands of the Marques de 
Legafies appeared to be sufficient warrant for Victor Mar- 
chand’s belief that the young lady would have a splendid 
dowry. But how could he dare to imagine that the most 
fanatical believer in blue blood in all Spain would give his 
daughter to the son of a grocer in Paris? Moreover, the 
French were hated. It was because the Marquis had been 
suspected of an attempt to raise the country in favor of 
Ferdinand VII. that General G-, who governed the pro¬ 

vince, had stationed Victor Marchand’s battalion in the little 
town of Menda to overawe the neighboring districts which 
received the Marques de Legafids’ word as law. A recent 
despatch from Marshal Ney had given ground for fear that the 
English might ere long effect a landing on the coast, and had 
indicated the Marquis as being in correspondence with the 
Cabinet in London. 

In spite, therefore, of the welcome with which the Spaniards 
had received Victor Marchand and his soldiers, that officer 
was always on his guard. As he went towards the terrace, 
where he had just surveyed the town and tlie districts confided 
to his charge, he had been asking himself what construction 
he ought to put upon the friendliness which the Marquis had 
invariably shown him, and how to reconcile the apparent 
tranquillity of the country with his general’s uneasiness. But 
a moment later these thoughts were driven from his mind by 
the instinct of caution and very legitimate curiosity. It had 
just struck him that there was a very fair number of lights in 
the town below. Although it was the Feast of Saint James, 
he himself had issued orders that very morning that all lights 
must be put out in the town at the hour prescribed by military 
regulations. The castle alone had been excepted in this 



THE EXECUTIONER. 


299 


order. Plainly here and there he saw the gleam of bayonets, 
where his own men were at their accustomed posts; but in 
the town there was a solemn silence, and not a sign that the 
Spaniards had given themselves up to the intoxication of a 
festival. He tried vainly for a while to explain this breach of 
the regulations on the part of the inhabitants; the mystery 
seemed but so much the more obscure because he had left in¬ 
structions with some of his officers to do police duty that 
night, and make the rounds of the town. 

With the impetuosity of youth, he was about to spring 
through a gap in the wall preparatory to a rapid scramble 
down the rocks, thinking to reach a small guard-house at the 
nearest entrance into the town more quickly than by the 
beaten track, when a faint sound stopped him. He fancied 
that he could hear the light footstep of a woman along the 
graveled garden walk. He turned his head and saw no one ; 
for one moment his eyes were dazzled by the wonderful 
brightness of the sea, the next he saw a sight so ominous that 
he stood stock-still with amazement, thinking that his senses 
must be deceiving him. The white moonbeams lighted the 
horizon, so that he could distinguish the sails of ships still a 
considerable distance out at sea. A shudder ran through 
him ; he tried to persuade himself that this was some optical 
delusion brought about by chance effects of moonlight on the 
waves ; and even as he made the attempt, a hoarse voice 
called to him by name. The officer glanced at the gap in the 
wall; saw a soldier’s head slowly emerge from it, and knew 
the grenadier whom he had ordered to accompany him to the 
castle. 

** Is that you, commandant ? ” 

‘‘Yes. What is it?” returned the young officer in a low 
voice. A kind of presentiment warned him to act cautiously. 

“ Those beggars down there are creeping about like worms; 
and, by your leave, I came as quickly as I could to report my 
little reconnoitring expedition.” 


300 


THE EXECUTIONER. 


** Go on,” answered Victor Marchand. 

** I have just been following a man from the castle who 
came round this way with a lantern in his hand. A lantern 
is a suspicious matter with a vengeance ! I don’t irpagine 
that there was any need for that good Christian to be lighting 
tapers at this time of night. Says I to myself, ‘ They mean 
to gobble us up! ’ and I set myself to dogging his heels; 
and that is how I found out that there is a pile of faggots, sir, 
two or three steps away from here.” 

Suddenly a dreadful shriek rang through the town below, 
and cut the man short. A light flashed in the commandant’s 
face, and the poor grenadier dropped down with a bullet 
through his head. Ten paces away a bonfire flared up like a 
conflagration. The sounds of music and laughter ceased all 
at once in the ballroom; the silence of death, broken only 
by groans, succeeded to the rhythmical murmur of the festival. 
Then the roar of cannon sounded from across the white plain 
of the sea. 

A cold sweat broke out on the young officer’s forehead. 
He had left his sword behind. He knew that his men had 
been murdered, and that the English were about to land. He 
knew that if he lived he would be dishonored ; he saw him¬ 
self summoned before a court-martial. For a moment his 
eyes measured the depth of the valley ; the next, just as he 
was about to spring down, Clara’s hand caught his. 

“ Fly ! ” she cried. ‘‘’My brothers are coming after me to 
kill you. Down yonder at the foot of the cliff you will find 
Juanito’s Andalusian. Go ! ” 

She thrust him away. The young man gazed at her in dull 
bewilderment; but obeying the instinct of self-preservation, 
which never deserts even the bravest, he rushed across the 
park in the direction pointed out to him, springing from rock 
to rock in places unknown to any save the goats. He heard 
Clara calling to her brothers to pursue him ; he heard the foot¬ 
steps of the murderers ; again and again he heard their balls 


THE EXECUTIONER. 


301 


whistling about his ears; but he reached the foot of the cliff, 
found the horse, mounted, and fled with lightning speed. 

A few hours later the young officer reached General G- *s 

quarters, and found him at dinner with the staff. 

“I put my life in your hands!” cried the haggard and 
exhausted commandant of Menda. 

He sank into a seat, and told his horrible story. It was 
received with an appalling silence. 

‘‘ It seems to me that you are more to be pitied than to 
blame,” the terrible general said at last. ‘‘You are not 
answerable for the Spaniard’s crimes, and, unless the marshal 
decides otherwise, I acquit you.” 

These words brought but cold comfort to the unfortunate 
officer. 

“ When the Emperor comes to hear about it! ” he cried. 

“Oh, he will be for having you shot,” said the general, 
“but we shall see. Now we will say no more about this,” 
he added severely, “ except to plan a revenge that shall strike 
a salutary terror into this country, where they carry on war 
like savages.” 

An hour later a whole regiment, a detachment of cavalry, 
and a convoy of artillery were upon the road. The general 
and Victor marched at the head of the column. The soldiers 
had been told of the fate of their comrades, and their rage 
knew no bounds. The distance between headquarters and the 
town of Menda was crossed at a wellnigh miraculous speed. 
Whole villages by the way were found to be under arms ; every 
one of the wretched hamlets was surrounded and their inhab¬ 
itants decimated. 

It so chanced that the English vessels still lay out at sea, 
and were no nearer the shore, a fact inexplicable until it was 
known afterwards that they were artillery transports which 
had outsailed the rest of the fleet. So the townsmen of 
Menda, left without the assistance on which they had reck¬ 
oned when the sails of the English appeared, were surrounded 



302 


THE EXECUTIONER. 


by French troops almost before they had had time to strike a 
blow. This struck such terror into them that they offered to 
surrender at discretion. An impulse of devotion, no isolated 
instance in the history of the Peninsula, led the actual slayers 
of the French to offer to give themselves up; seeking in this 
way to save the town, for from the general’s reputation for 
cruelty it was feared that he would give Menda over to the 
flames, and put the whole population to the sword. General 

G-took their offer, stipulating that every soul in the 

castle from the lowest servant to the Marquis should likewise 
be given up to him. These terms being accepted, the general 
promised to spare the lives of the rest of the townsmen, and 
to prohibit his soldiers from pillaging or setting fire to the 
town. A heavy contribution was levied, and the wealthiest 
inhabitants were taken as hostages to guarantee payment 
within twenty-four hours. 

The general took every necessary precaution for the safety 
of his troops, provided for the defense of the place, and re¬ 
fused to billet his men in the houses of the town. After they 
had bivouacked, he went up to the castle and entered it as a 
conqueror. The whole family of Leganes and their household 
were gagged, shut up in the great ballroom, and closely 
watched. From the windows it was easy to see the whole 
length of the terrace above the town. 

The staff was established in an adjoining gallery, where the 
general forthwith held a council as to the best means of pre¬ 
venting the landing of the English. An aide-de-camp was 
despatched to Marshal Ney, orders were issued to plant bat¬ 
teries along the coast, and then the general and his staff 
turned their attention to their prisoners. The two hundred 
Spaniards given up by the townsfolk were shot down then and 
there upon the terrace. And after this military execution, 
the general gave orders to erect gibbets to the number of the 
prisoners in the ballroom in the same place, and to send for 
the hangman out of the town. Victor took advantage of the 


THE EXECUTIONER. 


303 


interval before dinner to pay a visit to the prisoners. He 
soon came back to the general. 

“lam come in haste,” he faltered out, “to ask a favor.” 

“ You/^* exclaimed the general, with bitter irony in his 
tones. 

“Alas!” answered Victor, “it is a sorry favor. The 
Marquis has seen them erecting the gallows, and hopes that 
you will commute the punishment for his family; he entreats 
you to have the nobles beheaded.” 

“Granted,” said the general. 

“ He further asks that they maybe allowed the consolations 
of religion, and that they may be unbound; they give you 
their word that they will not attempt to escape.” 

“That I permit,” said the general, “ but you are answerable 
for them.” 

“The old noble offers you all that he has if you will pardon 
his youngest son.” 

“ Really ! ” cried the commander. “ His property is for¬ 
feited already to King Joseph.” He paused ; a contemptuous 
thought set wrinkles in his forehead, as he added, “ I will do 
better than they ask. I understand what he means by that 
last request of his. Very good. Let him hand down his 
name to posterity; but whenever it is mentioned, all Spain 
shall remember his treason and its punishment ! I will give 
the fortune and his life to any one of the sons who will do the 
executioner’s office. There, don’t talk any more about them 
to me.” 

Dinner was ready. The officers sat down to satisfy an ap¬ 
petite whetted by hunger. Only one among them was absent 
from the table—that one was Victor Marchand. After long 
hesitation, he went to the ballroom, and heard the last sighs 
of the proud house of Leganes. He looked sadly at the 
scene before him. Only last night, in this very room, he had 
seen their faces whirl past him in the waltz, and he shud¬ 
dered to think that those girlish heads with those of the three 


304 


THE EXECUTIONER, 


young brothers must fall in a brief space by the executioner’s 
sword. There sat the father and mother, their three sons 
and two daughters, perfectly motionless, bound to their gilded 
chairs. Eight serving-men stood with their hands tied behind 
them. These fifteen prisoners, under sentence of death, ex¬ 
changed grave glances; it was difficult to read the thoughts 
that filled them from their eyes, but profound resignation and 
regret that their enterprise should have failed so completely 
was written on more than one brow. 

The impassive soldiers who guarded them respected the 
grief of their bitter enemies. A gleam of curiosity lighted 
up all faces when Victor came in. He gave orders that the con¬ 
demned prisoners should be unbound, and himself unfastened 
the cords that held Clara a prisoner. She smiled mournfully 
at him. The officer could not refrain from lightly touching 
the young girl’s arm; he could not help admiring her dark 
hair, her slender waist. She was a true daughter of Spain, with 
a Spanish complexion, a Spaniard’s eyes, blacker than the 
raven’s wing beneath their long curving lashes. 

“ Did you succeed ? ” she asked, with a mournful smile, in 
which a certain girlish charm still lingered. 

Victor could not repress a groan. He looked from the 
faces of the three brothers to Clara, and again at the three 
young Spaniards. The first, the oldest of the family, was a 
man of thirty. He was short, and somewhat ill made; he 
looked haughty and proud, but a certain distinction was not 
lacking in his bearing, and he was apparently no stranger to 
the delicacy of feeling for which in olden times the chivalry 
of Spain was famous. His name was Juanito. The second 
son, Felipe, was about twenty years of age; he was like his 
sister Clara ; and the youngest was a child of eight. In the 
features of little Manuel a painter would have discerned some¬ 
thing of that Roman steadfastness which David has given to the 
children’s faces in his Republican genre pictures. The old 
Marquis, with his white hair, might have come down from 


THE EXECUTIONER. 


305 


some canvas of Murillo’s. Victor threw back his head in 
despair after this survey; how should one of these accept the 
general’s offer ! nevertheless he ventured to intrust it to Clara. 
A shudder ran through the Spanish girl, but she recovered 
herself almost instantly, and knelt before her father. 

“Father,” she said, “bid Juanito swear to obey the com¬ 
mands that you shall give him, and we shall be content.” 

The Marquesa trembled with hope, but as she leaned towards 
her husband and learned Clara’s hideous secret the mother 
fainted away. Juanito understood it all, and leaped up like a 
caged lion. Victor took it upon himself to dismiss the sol¬ 
diers, after receiving an assurance of entire submission from 
the Marquis. The servants were led away and given over to 
the hangman and their fate. When only Victor remained on 
guard in the room, the old Marques de Legafies rose to his feet. 

“Juanito,” he said. For all answer Juanito bowed his 
head in a way that meant refusal; he sank down into his chair, 
and fixed tearless eyes upon his father and mother in an intol¬ 
erable gaze. Clara went over to him and sat on his knee; 
she put her arms about him, and pressed kisses on his eyelids, 
saying gaily— 

“ Dear Juanito, if you but knew how sweet death at your 
hands will be to me ! I shall not be compelled to submit to 
the hateful touch of the hangman’s fingers. You will snatch 

me away from the evils to come and- Dear, kind Juanito, 

you could not bear the thought of my belonging to any one— 
well, then ? ” 

The velvet eyes gave Victor a burning glance; she 
seemed to try to awaken in Juanito’s heart his hatred for the 
French. 

“Take courage,” said his brother Felipe, “or our well- 
nigh royal line will be extinct.” 

Suddenly Clara sprang to her feet. The group round 
Juanito fell back, and the son who had rebelled with such 
good reason was confronted with his aged father. 

20 



306 


THE EXECUTIONER. 


‘‘Juanito, I command you ! ” said the Marquis solemnly. 

The yount Count gave no sign, and his father fell on his 
knees; Clara, Manuel, and Felipe unconsciously followed his 
example, stretching out suppliant hands to him who must save 
their family from oblivion, and seeming to echo their father’s 
words. 

“ Can it be that you lack the fortitude of a Spaniard and 
true sensibility, my son ? Do you mean to keep me on my 
knees? What right have you to think of your own life and 
of your own sufferings? Is this my son, madame ? ” the old 
Marquis added, turning to his wife. 

<'He will consent to it,” cried the mother in agony of soul. 
She had seen a slight contraction of Juanito’s brows which 
she, his mother, alone understood. 

Mariquita, the second daughter, knelt, with her slender 
clinging arms about her mother; the hot tears fell from her 
eyes, and her little brother Manuel upbraided her for weeping. 
Just at that moment the castle chaplain came in; the whole 
family surrounded him and led him up to Juanito. Victor 
felt that he could endure the sight no longer, and with a sign 
to Clara he hurried from the room to make one last effort 
for them. He found the general in boisterous spirits; the 
officers were still sitting over their dinner and drinking to¬ 
gether ; the wine had loosened their tongues. 

An hour later, a hundred of the principal citizens of Menda 
were summoned to the terrace by the general’s orders to wit¬ 
ness the execution of the family of Legands. A detachment 
had been told off to keep order among the Spanish townsfolk, 
who were marshaled beneath the gallows whereon the Marquis’ 
servants hung; the feet of those martyrs of their cause all but 
touched the citizens’ heads. Thirty paces away stood the 
block; the blade of a scimitar glittered upon it, and the exe¬ 
cutioner stood by in case Juanito should refuse at the last. 

The deepest silence prevailed, but before long it was broken 
by the sound of many footsteps, the measured tramp of a picket 


THE EXECUTIONER. 


307 


of soldiers, and the jingling of their weapons. Mingled with 
these came other noises—loud talk and laughter from the 
dinner-table where the officers were sitting; just as the music 
and the sound of the dancers' feet had drowned the prepara¬ 
tions for last night’s treacherous butchery. 

All eyes turned to .the castle, and beheld the family of 
nobles coming forth with incredible composure to their death. 
Every brow was serene and calm. One alone among them, 
haggard and overcome, leaned on the arm of the priest, who 
poured forth all the consolations of religion for the one man 
who was condemned to live. Then the executioner, like the 
spectators, knew that Juanito had consented to perform his 
office for a day. The old Marquis and his wife, Clara and 
Mariquita, and their two brothers knelt a few paces from the 
fatal spot. Juanito reached it, guided by the priest. As he 
stood at the block, the executioner plucked him by the sleeve, 
and took him aside, probably to give him certain instructions. 
The confessor so placed the victims that they could not wit¬ 
ness the executions, but one and all stood upright and fearless, 
like Spaniards, as they were. 

Clara sprang to her brother’s side before the others. 

‘‘Juanito,” she said to him, “be merciful to my lack of 
courage. Take me first! ” 

As she spoke, the footsteps of a man running at full speed 
echoed from the walls, and Victor appeared upon the scene. 
Clara was kneeling before the block; her white neck seemed 
to appeal to the blade to fall. The officer turned faint, but 
he found strength to rush to her side. 

“ The general grants you your life if you will consent to 
marry me,” he murmured. 

The Spanish girl gave the officer a glance full of proud disdain. 

“ Now, Juanito ! ” she said in her deep-toned voice. 

Her head fell at Victor’s feet. A shudder ran through the 
Marquesa de L^gafies, a convulsive tremor that she could not 
control, but she gave no other sign of her anguish. 


308 


THE EXECUTIONER. 


“Is this where I ought to be, dear Juanito? Is it all 
right? ” little Manuel asked his brother. 

“ Oh, Mariquita, you are weeping! ” Juanito said when 
his sister came. 

“Yes,” said the girl; “I am thinking of you, poor 
Juanito ; how unhappy you will be when we arc gone.” 

Then the Marquis’ tall figure approached. He looked at 
the block where his children’s blood had been shed, turned to 
the mute and motionless crowd, and said in a loud voice as he 
stretched out his hands to Juanito. 

“Spaniards! I give my son a father’s blessing. Now, 
Marquis^ strike ‘ without fear; ’ thou art ‘ without reproach.’ ” 

But when his mother came near, leaning on the confessor’s 
arm—“She fed me from her breast!” Juanito cried, in 
tones that drew a cry of horror from the crowd. The 
uproarious mirth of the officers over their wine died away 
before that terrible cry. The Marquesa knew that Juanito’s 
courage was exhausted; at one bound she sprang to the balus¬ 
trade, leaped forth, and was dashed to pieces on the rocks 
below. A cry of admiration broke from the spectators. 
Juanito swooned. 

“ General,” said an officer, half-drunk by this time, “ Mar- 
chand has just been telling me something about this execu¬ 
tion ; I will wager that it was not by your orders.” 

“Are you forgetting, gentlemen, that in a month’s time 
five hundred families in France will be in mourning, and that 

we are still in Spain?” cried General G-. “Do you 

want us to leave our bones here?” 

But not a man at the table, not even a subaltern, dared to 
empty his glass after that speech. 

In spite of the respect in which all men hold the Marques 
de L^ganes, in spite of the title of El Verdugo (the execu¬ 
tioner) conferred upon him as a patent of nobility by the 



THE EXECUTIONER. 


309 


King of Spain, the great noble is consumed by a gnawing 
grief. He lives a retired life, and seldom appears in public. 
The burden of his heroic crime weighs heavily upon him, and 
he seems to wait impatiently till the birth of a second son 
shall release him, and he may go to join the Shades that 
never cease to haunt him. 

Paris, October ^ 1820. 





FAREWELL. 


(Adieu.) 

To Prince Friedrich von Schwarzenberg 

Come, Deputy of the Centre, come along! We shall 
have to mend our pace if we mean to sit down to dinner 
when every one else does, and that’s a fact! Hurry up ! 
Jump, Marquis ! That’s it! Well done ! You are bounding 
over the furrows just like a stag ! ” 

These words were uttered by a sportsman seated much at 
his ease on the outskirts of the For§t de I’lsle-Adam ; he had 
just finished a Havana cigar, which he had smoked while he 
waited for his companion, who had evidently been straying 
about for some time among the forest undergrowth. Four 
panting dogs by the speaker’s side likewise watched the pro¬ 
gress of the personage for whose benefit the remarks were 
made. To make their sarcastic import fully clear, it should 
be added that the second sportsman was both short and stout; 
his ample girth indicated a truly magisterial corpulence, and 
in consequence his progress across the furrows was by no 
means easy. He was striding over a vast field of stubble; 
the dried cornstalks underfoot added not a little to the diffi¬ 
culties of his passage, and, to add to his discomforts, the genial 
influence of the sun that slanted into his eyes brought great 
drops of perspiration into his face. The uppermost thought 
in his mind being a strong desire to keep his balance, he 
lurched to and fro much like a coach jolted over an atrocious 
road. 

It was one of those September days of almost tropical heat 
that finishes the work of summer and ripens the grapes. Such 

(310) 


FAREWELL. 


311 


heat forbodes a coming storm; and though as yet there were 
wide patches of blue between the dark rain-clouds low down 
on the horizon, pale golden masses were rising and scattering 
with ominous swiftness from west to east, and drawing a shad¬ 
owy veil across the sky. The wind was still, save in the upper 
regions of the air, so that the weight of the atmosphere 
seemed to compress the steamy heat of the earth into the 
forest glades. The tall forest trees shut out every breath of 
air so completely that the little valley across which the sports¬ 
man was making his way was as hot as a furnace; the silent 
forest seemed parched with the fiery heat. Birds and insects 
were mute; the topmost twigs of the trees swayed with 
scarcely perceptible motion. Any one who retains some recol¬ 
lection of the summer of 1819 must surely compassionate the 
plight of the hapless supporter of the ministry who toiled and 
sweated over the stubble to rejoin his satirical comrade. That 
gentleman, as he smoked his cigar, had arrived, by a process 
of calculation based on the altitude of the sun, to the con¬ 
clusion that it must be about five o’clock. 

“Where the devil are we?” asked the stout sportsman. 
He wiped his brow as he spoke, and propped himself against 
a tree in the field opposite his companion, feeling quite un¬ 
equal to clearing the broad ditch that lay between them. 

“And you ask that question of me !"' retorted the other, 
laughing from his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of the 
bank. He flung the end of his cigar into the ditch, exclaim¬ 
ing, “I swear by Saint Hubert that no one shall catch 
risking myself again in a country that I don’t know with 
a magistrate, even if, like you, my dear d Albon, he happens 
to be an old schoolfellow.” 

“Why, Philip, have you really forgotten your own lan¬ 
guage ? You surely must have left your wits behind you in 
Siberia,” said the stouter of the two, with a glance half¬ 
comic, half-pathetic at a guide-post distant about a hundred 
paces from them. 


312 


FAREWELL. 


“ I understand,” replied the one addressed as Philip. He 
snatched up his rifle, suddenly sprang to his feet, made but 
one jump of it into the field, and rushed off to the guide-post. 

This way, d’Albon, here you are ! left about ! ” he shouted, 
gesticulating in the direction of the high-road. To Baillet 
and ITsle-Adam ! ” he went on ; ‘‘so if we go along here, 
we shall be sure to come upon the cross-road to Cassan.” 

“ Quite right, colonel,” said M. d’Albon, putting the cap 
with which he had been fanning himself back on his head. 

“Then forward! highly respected councilor,” returned 
Colonel Philip, whistling to the dogs, that seemed already to 
obey him rather than the magistrate their master. 

“ Are you aware, my Lord Marquis, that two leagues yet 
remain before us?” inquired the malicious soldier. “That 
village down yonder must be Baillet.” 

“ Great heavens ? ” cried the Marquis d’Albon. “ Go on 
to Cassan by all means, if you like; but if you do, you will 
go alone. I prefer to wait here, storm or no storm ; you can 
send a horse for me from the chateau. You have been making 
game of me, Sucy. We were to have a nice day’s sport by 
ourselves; we were not to go very far from Cassan, and go 
over ground that I knew. Pooh ! Instead of a day’s fun, ‘ 
you have kept me running like a greyhound since four o’clock 
this morning, and nothing but a cup or two of milk by way 
of breakfast. Oh ! if ever you find yourself in a court of law, 
I will take care that the day goes against you if you were in 
the right a hundred times over.” 

The dejected sportsman sat himself down on one of the 
stumps at the foot of the guide-post, disencumbered himself 
of his rifle and empty game-bag, and heaved a prolonged sigh. 

“ Oh, France, behold thy deputies ! ” laughed Colonel de 
Sucy. “ Poor old d’Albon ; if you had spent six months at 
the other end of Siberia as I did-” 

He broke off, and his eyes sought the sky, as if the story of 
his troubles was a secret between himself and God. 


FAREWELL, 


313 


*‘Come, march ! ” he added. ‘‘ If you once sit down, it 
is all over with you.” 

‘‘I can’t help it, Philip! It is such an old habit in a 
magistrate ! I am dead beat, upon my honor. If I had 
only bagged one hare though ! ” 

Two men more different are seldom seen together. The 
civilian, a man of forty-two, seemed scarcely more than thirty; 
while the soldier, at thirty years of age, looked to be forty at 
the least. Both wore the red rosette that proclaimed them 
to be officers of the Legion of Honor. A few locks of hair, 
mingled white and black, like a magpie’s wing, had strayed 
from beneath the colonel’s cap; while thick, fair curls clus¬ 
tered about the magistrate’s temples. The colonel was tall, 
spare, dried up, but muscular; the lines in his pale face told 
a tale of vehement passions or of terrible sorrows; but his 
comrade’s jolly countenance beamed with health, and would 
have done credit to an Epicurean. Both men were deeply 
sunburnt. Their high gaiters of brown leather carried souve¬ 
nirs of every ditch and swamp that they crossed that day. 

Come, come,” cried M. de Sucy, ‘‘forward ! One short 
hour’s march, and we shall be at Cassan with a good dinner 
before us.” 

“You never were in love, that is positive,” returned the 
councilor, with a comically piteous expression. “You are 
as inexorable as Article 304 of the Penal Code I ” 

Philip de Sucy shuddered violently. Deep lines appeared 
in his broad forehead, his face was overcast like the sky above 
them ; but though his features seemed to contract with the 
pain of an intolerably bitter memory, no tears came to his 
eyes. Like all men of strong character, he possessed the 
power of forcing his emotions down into some inner depth, 
and, perhaps, like many reserved natures, he shrank from lay¬ 
ing bare a wound too deep for any words of human speech, 
and winced at the thought of ridicule from those who do not 
care to understand. M. d’Albon was one of those who are 

L 


314 


FAREWELL. 


keenly sensitive by nature to the distress of others, who feel 
at once the pain they have unwittingly given by some blunder. 
He respected his friend’s mood, rose to his feet, forgot his 
weariness, and followed in silence, thoroughly annoyed with 
himself for having touched on a wound that seemed not yet 
healed. 

“ Some day I will tell you my story,” Philip said at last, 
wringing his friend’s hands, while he acknowledged his dumb 
repentance with a heartrending glance. “ To-day, I cannot.” 

They walked on in silence. As the colonel’s distress passed 
off the c\ 'uncilor’s fatigue returned. Instinctively, or rather 
urged by weariness, his eyes explored the depths of the forest 
around them ; he looked high and low among the trees, and 
gazed along the avenues, hoping to discover some dwelling 
where he might ask for hospitality. They reached a place 
where several roads met; and the councilor, fancying that he 
saw a thin film of smoke rising through the trees, made a 
stand and looked sharply about him. He caught a glimpse 
of the dark green branches of some firs among the other forest 
trees, and finally, A house ! a house!” he shouted. No 
sailor could have raised the cry of “Land ahead I ” more 
joyfully than he. 

He plunged at once into undergrowth, somewhat of the 
thickest; and the colonel, who had fallen into deep musings, 
followed him unheedingly. 

“ I would rather have an omelette here and home-made 
bread, and a chair to sit down in, than go further for a sofa, 
truffles, and Bordeaux wine at Cassan.” 

This outburst of enthusiasm on the councilor’s part was 
caused by the sight of the whitened wall of a house in the 
distance, standing out in strong contrast against the brown 
masses of knotted tree-trunks in the forest. 

“Aha! This used to be a priory, I should say,” the 
Marquis d’Albon cried once more, as they stood before a 
grim old gateway, Through the grating they could see the 


FAREWELL, 


315 


house itself standing in the midst of some considerable extent 
of park land; from the style of the architecture it appeared 
to have been a monastery once upon a time. 

“ Those knowing rascals of monks knew how to choose a 
site ! ” 

This last exclamation was caused by the magistrate’s amaze¬ 
ment at the romantic hermitage before his eyes. The house 
had been built on a spot half-way up the hillside on the slope 
below the village of Nerville, which crowned the summit. A 
huge circle of great oak trees, hundreds of years old, guarded 
the solitary place from intrusion. There appeared to be 
about forty acres of the park. The main building of the 
monastery faced the south, and stood in a space of green 
meadow, picturesquely intersected by several tiny clear 
streams, and by larger sheets of water so disposed as to have 
a natural effect. Shapely trees with contrasting foliage grew 
here and there. Grottos had been ingeniously contrived; 
and broad terraced walks, now in ruin, though the steps were 
broken and the balustrades eaten through with rust, gave to 
this sylvan Thebaid a certain character of its own. The art 
of man and the picturesqueness of nature had wrought together 
to produce a charming effect. Human passions surely could 
not cross that boundary of tall oak trees which shut out the 
sounds of the outer world, and screened the fierce heat of the 
sun from this forest sanctuary. 

“ What neglect! ” said M. d’Albon to himself, after the 
first sense of delight in the melancholy aspect of the ruins in 
the landscape, which seemed blighted by a curse. 

It was like some haunted spot, shunned of men. The twisted 
ivy stems clambered everywhere, hiding everything away 
beneath a luxuriant green mantle. Moss and lichens, brown 
and gray, yellow and red, covered the trees with fantastic 
patches of color, grew upon the benches in the garden, over¬ 
ran the roof and the walls of the house. The window-sashes 
were weather-worn and warped with age, the balconies were 


316 


FAREIVELL. 


dropping to pieces, the terraces in ruins. Here and there the 
folding shutters hung by a single hinge. The crazy doors 
would have given way at the first attempt to force an entrance. 

Out in the orchard the neglected fruit trees were running to 
wood, the rambling branches bore no fruit save the glistening 
mistletoe berries, and tall plants were growing in the garden 
walks. All this forlornness shed a charm across the picture 
that wrought on the spectator’s mind with an influence like 
that of some enchanting poem, filling his soul with dreamy 
fancies. A poet must have lingered there in deep and melan¬ 
choly musings, marveling at the harmony of this wilderness, 
where decay had a certain grace of its own. 

In a moment a few gleams of sunlight struggled through a 
rift in the clouds, and a shower of colored light fell over the 
wild garden. The brown tiles of the roof glowed in the 
light, the mosses took bright hues, strange shadows played 
over the grass beneath the trees; the dead autumn tints grew 
vivid, bright unexpected contrasts were evoked by the light, 
every leaf stood out sharply in the clear, thin air. Then all 
at once the sunlight died away, and the landscape that seemed 
to have spoken grew silent and gloomy again, or, rather, it 
took gray soft tones like the tenderest hues of autumn dusk. 

“It is the palace of the Sleeping Beauty,” the councilor 
said to himself (he had already begun to look at the place 
from the point of view of an owner of property). “Whom 
can the place belong to, I wonder. He must be a great fool 
not to live on such a charming little estate ! ” 

Just at that moment, a woman sprang out from under a 
walnut tree on the right-hand side of the gateway, and passed 
before the councilor as noiselessly and swiftly as the shadow 
of a cloud. This apparition struck him dumb with amaze¬ 
ment. 

“ Hallo, d’Albon, what is the matter? ” asked the colonel, 
“lam rubbing my eyes to find out whether I am awake or 
asleep,” answered the magistrate, whose countenance was 


FAREWELL. 


317 


pressed against the grating in the hope of catching a second 
glimpse of the ghost. 

In all probability she is under that fig tree,” he went on, 
indicating, for Philip’s benefit, some branches that over¬ 
topped the wall on the left-hand side of the gateway. 

“She? Who?” 

“ Eh ! how should I know ? ” answered M. d’Albon. “ A 
strange-looking woman sprang up there under my very eyes 
just now, he added, in a low voice; “she looked to me 
more like a ghost than a living being. She was so slender, 
light and shadowy that she might be transparent. Her face 
was as white as milk, her hair, her eyes, and her dress were 
black. She gave me a glance as she flitted by. I am not 
easily frightened, but that cold, stony stare of hers froze the 
blood in my veins. ” 

“ Was she pretty ? ” inquired Philip. 

“ I don’t know. I saw nothing but those eyes in her 
head.” 

“ The devil take dinner at Cassan ! ” exclaimed the colonel; 
“ let us stay here. I am as eager as a boy to see the inside of 
this queer place. The window-sashes are painted red, do you 
see ? There is a red line round the panels of the doors and 
the edges of the shutters. It might be the devil’s own dwell¬ 
ing; perhaps he took it over when the monks went out. 
Now, then, let us give chase to the black and white lady; 
come along ! ” cried Philip, with forced gaiety. 

He had scarcely finished speaking when the two sportsmen 
heard a cry as if some bird had been taken in a snare. They 
listened. There was a sound like the murmur of rippling 
water, as something forced its way through the bushes; but 
diligently as they lent their ears, there was no footfall on the 
path, the earth kept the secret of the mysterious woman’s 
passage, if indeed she had moved from her hiding-place. 

“ This is very strange ! ” cried Philip. 

Following the wall of the park, the two friends reached 


318 


FAREWELL. 


before long a forest road leading to the village of Chauvry; 
they went along this track in the direction of the highway to 
Paris, and reached another large gateway. Through the rail¬ 
ings they had a conmplete view of the fagade of the mysterious 
house. From this point of view, the dilapidation was still 
more apparent. Huge cracks had riven the walls of the main 
body of the house built round three sides of a square. 
Evidently the place was allowed to fall to ruin; there were 
holes in the roof, broken slates and tiles lay about below. 
Fallen fruit from the orchard trees was left to rot on the ground ; 
a cow was grazing over the bowling-green and trampling the 
flowers in the garden beds; a goat browsed on the green 
grapes and young vine-shoots on the trellis. 

“ It is all of a piece,” remarked the colonel. “ The neglect 
is in a fashion systematic.” He laid his hand on the chain 
of the bell-pull, but the bell had lost its clapper. The two 
friends heard no sound save the peculiar grating creak of the 
rusty spring. A little door in the wall beside the gateway, 
though ruinous, held good against all their efforts to force it 
open. 

“ Oho ! all this is growing very interesting,” Philip said to 
his companion. 

“If I were not a magistrate,” returned M. d’Albon, “I 
should think that the woman in black is a witch.” 

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the cow 
came up to the railings and held out her warm damp nose, as 
if she were glad of human society. Then a woman, if so 
indescribable a being could be called a woman, sprang up 
from the bushes, and pulled at the cord about the cow’s neck. 
From beneath the crimson handkerchief about the woman’s 
head, fair matted hair escaped, something as tow hangs about 
a spindle. She wore no kerchief at the throat. A coarse 
black-and-gray striped woolen petticoat, too short by several 
inches, left her legs bare. She might have belonged to some 
tribe of Redskins in Fenimore Cooper’s novels ; for her neck, 


FAREWELL. 


319 


arms, and ankles looked as if they had been painted brick-red. 
There was no spark of intelligence in her featureless face ; her 
pale, bluish eyes looked out dull and expressionless from 
beneath the eyebrows with one or two straggling white hairs 
on them. Her teeth were prominent and uneven, but white 
as a dog’s. 

“Hallo, good woman,” called M. de Sucy. 

She came slowly up to the railing, and stared at the two 
sportsmen with a contorted smile painful to see. 

“ Where are we? What is the name of the house yonder? 
Whom does it belong to? Who are you? Do you come 
from hereabouts?” 

To these questions, and to a host of others poured out in 
succession upon her by the two friends, she made no answer 
save gurgling noises in the throat, more like animal sounds 
than anything uttered by a human voice. 

“Don’t you see that she is deaf and dumb?” said M. 
d’Albon. 

“ Franciscan monks ! ” the peasant-woman said at last. 

“Ah ! she is right. The house looks as though it might 
once have been a Minorite convent,” he went on. 

Again they plied the peasant woman with questions, but, 
like a wayward child, she colored up, fidgeted with her sabot, 
twisted the rope by which she held the cow that had fallen to 
grazing again, stared at the sportsmen, and scrutinized every 
article of clothing upon them ; she gibbered, grunted, and 
clucked, but no articulate word did she utter. 

“Your name?” asked Philip, fixing her with his eyes as 
if he were trying to bewitch the woman. 

“ Genevieve,” she answered, with an empty laugh. 

“ The cow is the most intelligent creature we have seen so 
far,” exclaimed the magistrate. “I shall fire a shot, that 
ought to bring somebody out.” 

D’Albon had just taken up his rifle when the colonel put 
out a hand to stop him, and pointed out the mysterious 


320 


FAREWELL. 


woman who had aroused such lively curiosity in them. She 
seemed to be absorbed in deep thought, as she went along a 
green alley some little distance away, so slowly that the friends 
had time to take a good look at her. She wore a threadbare 
black satin gown, her long hair curled thickly over her fore¬ 
head, and fell like a shawl about her shoulders below her 
waist. Doubtless she was accustomed to the dishevelment of 
her locks, for she seldom put back the hair on either side of 
her brows; but when she did so, she shook her head with a 
sudden jerk that had not to be repeated to shake away the 
thick veil from her eyes or forehead. In everything that she 
did, moreover, there was a wonderful certainty in the working 
of the mechanism, an unerring swiftness and precision, like 
that of an animal, wellnigh marvelous in a woman. 

The two sportsmen were amazed to see her spring up into 
an apple tree and cling to a bough lightly as a bird. She 
snatched at the fruit, ate it, and dropped to the ground with 
the same supple grace that charms us in a squirrel. The 
elasticity of her limbs took all appearance of awkwardness or 
effort from her movements. She played about upon the grass, 
rolling in it as a young child might have done; then, on a 
sudden, she lay still and stretched out her feet and hands, 
with the languid natural grace of a kitten dozing in the sun. 

There was a threatening grov /1 of thunder far away, and at 
this she started up on all fours and listened, like a dog who 
hears a strange footstep. One result of this strange attitude 
was to separate her thick black hair into two masses, that fell 
away on either side of her face and left her shoulders bare; 
the two witnesses of this singular scene wondered at the white¬ 
ness of the skin that shone like a meadow daisy, and at the 
neck that indicated the perfection of the rest of her form. 

A wailing cry broke from her; she rose to her feet, and 
stood upright. Every successive movement was made so 
lightly, so gracefully, so easily, that she seemed to be no 
human being, but one of Ossian’s maids of the mist. She 


FAREWELL. 


321 


went across the grass to one of the pools of water, deftly 
shook off her shoe, and seemed to enjoy dipping her foot, 
white as marble, in the spring; doubtless it pleased her to 
make the circling ripples, and watch them glitter like gems. 
She knelt down by the brink, and played there like a child, 
dabbling her long tresses in tlie water, and flinging them loose 
again to see the water drip from the ends, like a string of 
pearls in the sunless light. 

“ She is mad ! ” cried the councilor. 

A hoarse cry rang through the air; it came from Genevieve, 
and seemed to be meant for the mysterious woman. She rose 
to her feet in a moment, flinging back the hair from her face, 
and then the colonel and d’Albon could see her features dis¬ 
tinctly. As soon as she saw the two friends she bounded to 
the railings with the swiftness of a fawn. 

Farewell she said in low, musical tones, but they 
could not discover the least trace of feeling, the least idea in 
the sweet sounds that they had awaited impatiently. 

M. d’Albon admired the long lashes, the thick, dark eye¬ 
brows, the dazzling fairness of a skin untinged by any trace 
of red. Only the delicate blue veins contrasted with that 
uniform whiteness. 

But when the Marquis turned to communicate his surprise 
at the sight of so strange an apparition, he saw the colonel 
stretched on the grass like one dead. M. d’Albon fired his 
gun into the air, shouted for help, and tried to raise his friend. 
At the sound of the shot, the strange lady, who had stood 
motionless by the gate, fled away, crying out like a wounded 
wild creature, circling round and round in the meadow, with 
every sign of unspeakable terror. 

M. d’Albon heard a carriage rolling along the road tol’Isle 
Adam, and waved his handkerchief to implore help. The 
carriage immediately came towards the Minorite convent, and 
M. d’Albon recognized neighbors, M. de and Mme. de Grand- 
ville, who hastened to alight and put their carriage at his dis- 
21 


322 


FAREWELL. 


posal. Colonel de Sucy inhaled the salts which Mme. de 
Grandville happened to have with her; he opened his eyes, 
looked towards the mysterious figure that still fled wailing 
through the meadow, and a faint cry of horror broke from him ; 
he closed his eyes again, with a dumb gesture of entreaty to 
his friends to take him away from this scene. M. and Mme. 
de Grandville begged the councilor to make use of their 
carriage, adding very obligingly that they themselves would 
walk. 

*‘Who can the lady be?” inquired the magistrate, looking 
towards the strange figure. 

People think that she comes from Moulins,” answered 
M. de Grandville. ‘‘She is a Comtesse de Vandieres; she is 
said to be mad; but as she has only been here for two 
months, I cannot vouch for the truth of all this hearsay talk.” 

M. d’Albon thanked M. and Mme. de Grandville, and they 
set out for Cassan. 

“It is she ! ” cried Philip, coming to himself. 

“She? who?” asked d’Albon. 

“ Stephanie- Ah ! dead and yet living still; still 

alive, but her mind is gone ! I thought the sight would kill 
me. 

The prudent magistrate, recognizing the gravity of the crisis 
through which his friend was passing, refrained from asking 
questions or exciting him further, and grew impatient of the 
length of the way to the chdteau, for the change wrought in 
the colonel’s face alarmed him. He feared lest the Countess’ 
terrible disease had communicated itself to Philip’s brain. 
When they reached the avenue at 1 ’Isle-Adam d’Albon sent the 
servant for the local doctor, so that the colonel had scarcely 
been laid in bed before the surgeon was beside him. 

“If Monsieur le Colonel had not been fasting, the shock 
must have killed him,” pronounced the leech. “He was 
overtired, and that saved him,” and with a few directions as 
to the patient’s treatment, he went to prepare a composing 


FAREWELL. 


323 


draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next morning, 
but the doctor had insisted on sitting up all night with him. 

‘‘I confess, Monsieur le Marquis,” the surgeon said, ‘‘that 
I feared for the brain. M. de Sucy has had some very violent 
shock; he is a man of strong passions, but with his tempera¬ 
ment, the first shock decides everything. He will very likely 
be out of danger to-morrow.” 

The doctor was perfectly right. The next day the patient 
was allowed to see his friend. 

“ I want you to do something for me, dear d’Albon,” 
Philip said, grasping his friend’s hand. “ Hasten at once to 
the Minorite convent, find out everything about the lady 
whom we saw there, and come back as soon as you can ; I shall 
count the minutes till I see you again.” 

M. d’Albon called for his horse, and galloped over to the 
old monastery. When he reached the gateway he found some 
one standing there, a tall, spare man with a kindly face, who 
answered in the affirmative when he was asked if he lived in 
the ruined house. M. d’Albon explained his errand. 

“Why, then, it must have been you, sir, who fired that 
unlucky shot! You all but killed my poor invalid.” 

“ Eh ! I fired into the air ! ” 

“ If you had actually hit Madame la Comtesse, you would 
have done less harm to her.” 

“ Well, well, then, we can neither of us complain, for the 
sight of the Countess all but killed my friend, M. de Sucy.” 

“The Baron de Sucy, is it possible?” cried the other, 
clasping his hands. “ Has he been in Russia ? was he in the 
Beresina? ” 

“Yes,” answered d’Albon. “He was taken prisoner by the 
Cossacks and sent to Siberia. He has not been back in this 
country a twelvemonth.” 

“ Come in, monsieur,” said the other, and he led the way 
to a drawing-room on the ground-floor. Everything in the 
room showed signs of capricious destruction. 


324 


FAREWELL. 


Valuable china jars lay in fragments on either side of a 
clock beneath a glass shade, which had escaped. The silk 
hangings about the windows were torn to rags, while the 
muslin curtains were untouched. 

‘‘You see about you the havoc wrought by a charming 
being to whom I have dedicated my life. She is my niece ; 
and though medical science is powerless in her case, I hope to 
restore her to reason, though the method which I am trying 
is, unluckily, only possible to the wealthy.” 

Then, like all who live much alone and daily bear the 
burden of a heavy trouble, he fell to talk with the magistrate. 
This is the story that he told, set in order, and with the many 
digressions made by both teller and hearer omitted. 

When, at nine o’clock at night, on the 28th of November, 
1812, Marshal Victor abandoned the heights of Studzianka, 
which he had held through the day, he left a thousand men 
behind with instructions to protect, till the last possible mo¬ 
ment, the two pontoon bridges over the Beresina that still held 
good. The rearguard was to save if possible an appalling 
number of stragglers, so numbed with the cold that they ob¬ 
stinately refused to leave the baggage-wagons. The heroism 
of the generous band was doomed to fail; for, unluckily, the 
men who poured down to the eastern bank of the Beresina found 
carriages, caissons, and all kinds of property which the army 
had been forced to abandon during its passage on the 27th 
and 28th days of November. The poor, half-frozen wretches, 
sunk almost to the level of brutes, finding such unhoped-for 
riches, bivouacked in the deserted space, laid hands on the 
military stores, improvised huts out of the material, lighted 
fires with anything that would burn, cut up the carcasses of 
the horses for food, tore out the linings of the carriages, 
wrapped themselves in them, and lay down to sleep, instead 
of crossing the Beresina in peace under cover of night—the 
Beresina that even then had proved, by an incredible fatality, 


FAREWELL. 


325 


SO disastrous to the army. Such apathy on the part of the 
poor fellows can only be understood by those who remember 
tramping across those vast deserts of snow, with nothing to 
quench their thirst but snow, snow for their bed, snow as far 
as the horizon on every side, and no food but snow, a little 
frozen beetroot, horseflesh, or a handful of meal. 

The miserable creatures were dropping down, overcome by 
hunger, thirst, weariness, and sleep, when they reached the 
shores of the Beresina and found fuel and fire and victuals, 
countless wagons and tents, a whole improvised town, in 
short. The whole village of Studzianka had been removed 
piecemeal from the heights to the plain, and the very perils 
and miseries of this dangerous and doleful habitation smiled 
invitingly to the wayfarers, who beheld no prospect beyond it 
but the awful Rassian deserts. A huge hospice, in short, was 
erected for twenty hours of existence. Only one thought— 
the thought of rest—appealed to men weary of life or rejoic¬ 
ing in unlooked-for comfort. 

They lay right in the line of fire from the cannon of the 
Russian left; but to that vast mass of human creatures, a 
patch upon the snow, sometimes dark, sometimes breaking 
into flame, the indefatigable grapeshot was but one discom¬ 
fort the more. For them it was only a storm, and they paid 
the less attention to the bolts that fell among them because 
there were none to strike down there save dying men, the 
v/ounded, or perhaps the dead. Stragglers came up in little 
bands at every moment. These walking corpses instantly 
separated, and wandered begging from fire to fire; and meet¬ 
ing, for the most part, with refusals, banded themselves 
together again, and took by force what they could not other¬ 
wise obtain. They were deaf to the voices of their officers 
prophesying death on the morrow, and spent the energy re¬ 
quired to cross the swamp in building shelters for the night 
and preparing a meal that often proved fatal. The coming 
death no longer seemed an evil, for it gave them an hour of 


826 


FAREWELL. 


slumber before it came. Hunger and thirst and cold—these 
were evils, but not death. 

At last wood and fuel and canvas and shelters failed, and 
hideous brawls began between destitute late-comers and the 
rich already in possession of a lodging. The weaker were 
driven away, until a few last fugitives before the Russian 
advance were obliged to make their bed in the snow, and lay 
down to rise no more. 

Little by little the mass of half-dead humanity became so 
dense, so deaf, so torpid—or perhaps it should be said so 
happy—that Marshal Victor, their heroic defender against 
twenty thousand Russians under Wittgenstein, was actually 
compelled to cut his way by force through this forest of men, 
so as to cross the Beresina with the five thousand heroes 
whom he was leading to the Emperor. The miserable crea¬ 
tures preferred to be trampled and crushed to death rather 
than stir from their places, and died without a sound, smiling 
at the dead ashes of their fires, forgetful of France. 

Not before ten o’clock that night did the Due de Belluno 
reach the other side of the river. Before committing his men 
to the pontoon bridges that led to Zembin, he left the fate of 
the rearguard at Studzianka in Eble’s hands, and to Eble the 
survivors of the calamities of the Beresina owed their lives. 

About midnight, the great general, followed by a courageous 
officer, came out of his little hut by the bridge and gazed at 
the spectacle of this camp between the bank of the Beresina 
and the Borizof road to Studzianka. The thunder of the 
Russian cannonade had ceased. Here and there faces that 
had nothing human about them were lighted up by countless 
fires that seemed to grow pale in the glare of the snowfields, 
and to give no light. Nearly thirty thousand wretches, 
belonging to every nation that Napoleon had hurled upon 
Russia, lay there hazarding their lives with the indifference 
of brute beasts. 

We have all these to save,” the general said to his sub- 


FAREWELL. 


327 


ordinate. ‘‘ To-morrow morning the Russians will be in 
Studzianka. The moment they come up we shall have to set 
fire to the bridge; so pluck up heart, my boy! Make your 
way out and up yonder through them, and tell General Four¬ 
nier that he has barely time to evacuate his post and cut his 
way through to the bridge. As soon as you have seen 
him set out, follow him down, take some able-bodied men, 
and set fire to the tents, wagons, caissons, carriages, anything 
and everything, without pity, and drive these fellows on to 
the bridge. Compel everything that walks on two legs to 
take refuge on the other bank. We must set fire to the camp ; 
it is our last resource. If Berthier had let me burn those 

d-d wagons sooner, no lives need have been lost in the 

river except my poor pontooneers, my fifty heroes, who saved 
the army, and will be forgotten.” 

The general passed his hand over his forehead and said no 
more. He felt that Poland would be his tomb, and foresaw 
that afterwards no voice would be raised to speak for the noble 
fellows who had plunged into the stream—into the waters of 
the Beresina !—to drive in the piles for the bridges. And, 
indeed, only one of them is living now, or, to be more accu¬ 
rate, starving, utterly forgotten, in a country village ! The 
brave officer had scarcely gone a hundred paces towards Stud¬ 
zianka, when General Eble roused some of his patient pon¬ 
tooneers, and began his work of mercy by setting fire to the 
camp on the side nearest the bridge, so compelling the sleep¬ 
ers to rise and cross the Beresina. Meanwhile the young 
aide-de-camp, not without difficulty, reached the one wooden 
house yet left standing in Studzianka. 

“So the box is pretty full, is it, messmate?” he said to a 
man whom he found outside. 

“You will be a knowing fellow if you manage to get in¬ 
side,” the officer returned, without turning round or stopping 
his occupation of hacking at the woodwork of the house with 
his sabre. 


328 


FAREWELL. 


‘‘ Philip, is that you? ” cried the aide-de-camp, recognizing 
the voice of one of his friends. 

“Yes. Aha! is it you, old fellow?” returned M. de 
Sucy, looking around at the aide-de-camp, who like himself 
was not more than twenty-three years old. “ I fancied you 
were on the other side of this confounded river. Do you 
come to bring us sweetmeats for dessert 1 You will get a warm 
welcome,” he added, as he tore away a strip of bark from the 
wood and gave it to his horse by way of fodder. 

“I am looking for your commandant. General Eble has 
sent me to tell him to file off to Zembin. You have only 
just time to cut your way through that mass of dead men ; as 
soon as you get through, I am going to set fire to the place to 
make them move-” 

“You almost make me feel warm I Your news has put me 
in a fever; I have two friends to bring through. Ah ! but 
for these marmots, I should have been dead before now, old 
fellow. On their account I am taking care of my horse in¬ 
stead of eating him. But have you a crust about you, for 
pity’s sake ? It is thirty hours since I have stowed any vic¬ 
tuals. I have been fighting like a madman to keep up a little 
warmth in my body and what courage I have left.” 

“ Poor Philip I I have nothing—not a scrap ! But is your 
general in there?” 

“ Don’t attempt to go in. The barn is full of our wounded. 
Go up a bit higher, and you will see a sort of pigsty to the 
right—that is where the general is. Good-bye, my dear 
fellow. If ever we meet again in a quadrille in a ballroom in 
Paris-” 

He did not finish the sentence, for the treachery of the 
northeast wind that whistled about them froze Major Philips’ 
lips, and the aide-de-camp kept moving for fear of being frost¬ 
bitten. Silence soon prevailed, scarcely broken by the groans 
of the wounded in the barn, or the stifled sounds made by 
M. de Sucy’s horse crunching the frozen bark with famished 



FAREWELL. 


329 


eagerness. Philip thrust his sabre into the sheath, caught at 
the bridle of the precious animal that he had managed to 
keep for so long, and drew her away from the miserable fod¬ 
der that she was bolting with apparent relish. 

Come along, Bichette ! come along! It lies with you 
now, my beauty, to save Stephanie’s life. There, wait a little 
longer, and they will let us lie down and die, no doubt;” 
and Philip, wrapped in a pelisse, to which doubtless he owed 
his life and energies, began to run, stamping his feet on the 
frozen snow to keep them warm. He was scarcely five hundred 
paces away before he saw a great fire blazing on the spot where 
he had left his carriage that morning with an old soldier to 
guard it. A dreadful misgiving seized upon him. Many a 
man under the influence of a powerful feeling during the 
Retreat summoned up energy for his friend’s sake when he 
would not have exerted himself to save his own life; so it was 
with Philip. He soon neared a hollow, where he had left a 
carriage sheltered from the cannonade, a carriage that held a 
young woman, his playmate in childhood, dearer to him than 
any one else on earth. 

Some thirty stragglers were sitting round a tremendous 
blaze, which they kept up with logs of wood, planks, wrenched 
from the floors of the caissons, and wheels, and panels, from 
carriage bodies. These had been, doubtless, among the last 
to join the sea of fires, huts, and human faces that filled the 
great furrow in the land betw'een Studzianka and the fatal 
river, a restless living sea of almost imperceptibly moving fig¬ 
ures, that sent up a smothered hum of sound blended with 
frightful shrieks. It seemed that hunger and despair had 
driven these forlorn creatures to take forcible possession of 
the carriage, for the old general and his young wife, whom 
they had found warmly wrapped in pelisses and traveling 
cloaks, were now crouching on the earth beside the fire, and 
one of the carriage doors was broken. 

As soon as the group of stragglers round the fire heard the 


330 


fAR EWELL. 


footfall of the major’s horse, a frenzied yell of hunger went up 
from them. “ A horse ! ” they cried. “ A horse ! ” 

All the voices went up as one voice. 

“ Back ! back ! Lookout! ” shouted two or three of them, 
leveling their muskets at the animal. 

“ I will pitch you neck and crop into your fire, you black¬ 
guards ! ” cried Philip springing in front of the mare. There 
are dead horses lying up yonder; go and look for them ! 

“ What a rum customer the officer is! Once, twice, will 
you get out of the way ? ” returned a giant grenadier. “You 
won’t? All right then, just as you please.” 

A woman’s shriek rang out above the report. Luckily, 
none of the bullets hit Philip; but poor Bichette lay in the 
agony of death. Three of the men came up and put an end 
to her with thrusts of the bayonet. 

“Cannibals! leave me the rug and my pistols,” cried 
Philip in desperation. 

“ Oh 1 the pistols if you like ; but as for the rug, there is a 
fellow yonder who has had nothing to ‘ wet his whistle ’ these 
two days, and is shivering in his coat of cobw'ebs, and that’s 
our general.” 

Philip looked up and saw a man with worn-out shoes and a 
dozen rents in his trousers ; the only covering for his head 
was a ragged foraging cap, white with rime. He said no 
more after that, but snatched up his pistols. 

Five of the men dragged the mare to the fire, and began to 
cut up the carcass as dexterously as any journeymen butchers 
in Paris. The scraps of meat were distributed and flung upon 
the coals, and the whole process was magically swift. Philip 
went over to the woman who had given the cry of terror when 
she recognized his danger, and sat down by her side. She 
sat motionless upon a cushion taken from the carriage, warm¬ 
ing herself at the blaze ; she said no word, and gazed at him 
without a smile. He saw beside her the soldier whom he had 
left mounting guard over the carriage ; the poor fellow had 


FAREWELL. 


331 


been wounded ; he had been overpowered by numbers, and 
forced to surrender to the stragglers who had set upon him, 
and, like a dog who defends his master’s dinner till the last 
moment, he had taken his share of the spoil, and had made 
a sort of cloak for himself out of a sheet. At that particular 
moment he was busy toasting a piece of horseflesh, and in his 
face the major saw a gleeful anticipation of the coming feast. 

The Comte de Vandieres, who seemed to have grown quite 
childish in the last few days, sat on a cushion close to his 
wife, and stared into the fire. He was only just beginning 
to shake off his torpor under the influence of the warmth. 
He had been no more affected by Philip’s arrival and danger 
than by the fight and subsequent pillage of his traveling car¬ 
riage. 

At first Sucy caught the young Countess’ hand in his, trying 
to express his affection for her, and the pain that it gave him 
to see her reduced like this to the last extremity of misery; 
but he said nothing as he sat by her side on the thawing heap 
of snow, he gave himself up to the pleasure of the sensation of 
warmth, forgetful of danger, forgetful of all things else in the 
world. In spite of himself his face expanded with an almost 
fatuous expression of satisfaction, and he waited impatiently 
till the scrap of horseflesh that had fallen to his soldier’s 
share should be cooked. The smell of the charred flesh stim¬ 
ulated his hunger. Hunger clamored within him and silenced 
his heart, his courage, and his love. He coolly looked round 
on the results of the spoliation of his carriage. Not a man 
seated round the fire but had shared the booty, the rugs, 
cushions, pelisses, dresses—articles of clothing that belonged 
to the Count and Countess or to himself. Philip turned to 
see if anything worth taking was left in the berline. He 
saw by the light of the flames, gold, and diamonds, and 
silver lying scattered about; no one had cared to appro¬ 
priate the least particle. There was something hideous in 
the silence among those human creatures round the fire; 


332 


FAREWELL. 


none of them spoke, none of them stirred, save to do such 
things as each considered necessary for his own comfort. 

It was a grotesque misery. The men’s faces were warped 
and disfigured with the cold, and plastered over with a 
layer of mud ; you could see the thickness of the mask by 
the channel traced down their cheeks by the tears that ran 
from their eyes, and their long slovenly-kept beards added 
to the hideousness of their appearance. Some were wrapped 
round in women’s shawls, others in horse-cloths, dirty 
blankets, rags stiffened with melting hoar-frost; here and 
there a man wore a boot on one foot and a shoe on the 
other; in fact, there was not one of them but wore some 
ludicrously odd costume. But the men themselves with such 
matter for jest about them were gloomy and taciturn. 

The silence was unbroken save by the crackling of the 
wood, the roaring of the flames, the far-off hum of the camp, 
and the sound of sabres hacking at the carcass of the mare. 
Some of the hungriest of the men were still cutting tit-bits 
for themselves. A few miserable creatures, more weary than 
the others, slept outright; and if they happened to roll into 
the fire, no one pulled them back. With cut-and-dried logic 
their fellows argued that if they were not dead, a scorching 
ought to be sufficient warning to quit and seek out more com¬ 
fortable quarters. If the poor wretch woke to find himself on 
fire, he was burned to death, and nobody pitied him. Here 
and there the men exchanged glances, as if to excuse their 
indifference by the carelessness of the rest; the thing hap¬ 
pened twice under the young Countess’ eyes, and she uttered 
no sound. When all the scraps of horseflesh had been 
broiled upon the coals, they were devoured with a ravenous 
greediness that would have been disgusting in wild beasts. 

“And now we have seen thirty infantry-men on one horse 
for the first time in our lives !” cried the grenadier who had 
shot the mare, the one solitary joke that sustained the French¬ 
man’s reputation for wit. 


FAREWELL. 


333 


Before long the poor fellows huddled themselves up in their 
clothes, and lay down on planks of timber, on anything but 
the bare snow, and slept—heedless of the morrow. Major de 
Sucy having warmed himself and satisfied his hunger, fought 
in vain against the drowsiness that weighed upon his eyes. 
During this brief struggle he gazed at the sleeping girl who 
had turned her face to the fire, so that he could see her closed 
eyelids and part of her forehead. She was wrapped round in 
a furred pelisse and a coarse horseman’s cloak, her head lay on 
a blood-stained cushion ; a tall astrakhan cap tied over her 
head by a handkerchief knotted under the chin protected her 
face as much as possible from the cold, and she had tucked up 
her feet in the cloak. As she lay curled up in this fashion, she 
bore no likeness to any creature. 

Was this the lowest of camp-followers? Was this the 
charming woman, the pride of her lover’s heart, the queen of 
many a Parisian ballroom ? Alas ! even for the eyes of this 
most devoted friend, there was no discernible trace of woman¬ 
hood in that bundle of rags and linen, and the cold was 
mightier than the love in a woman’s heart. 

Then for the major the husband and wife came to be like 
two distant dots seen through the thick veil that the most 
irresistible kind of slumber spread over his eyes. It all 
seemed to be part of a dream—the leaping flames, the recum¬ 
bent figures, the awful cold that lay in wait for them three 
paces away from the warmth of the fire that glowed for a 
little while. One thought that could not be stifled haunted 
Philip—“ If I go to sleep, we shall all die; I will not sleep,” 
he said to himself. 

He slept. After an hour’s slumber M. de Sucy was awak¬ 
ened by a hideous uproar and the sound of an explosion. The 
remembrances of his duty, of the danger of his beloved, 
rushed upon his mind with a sudden shock. He uttered a 
cry like the growl of a wild beast. He and his servant stood 
upright above the rest. They saw a sea of fire in the dark- 


334 


FARE WELL. 


ness, and against it moving masses of human figures. Flames 
were devouring the huts and tents. Despairing shrieks and 
yelling cries reached their ears ; they saw thousands upon 
thousands of wild and desperate faces; and through this 
inferno a column of soldiers was cutting its way to the bridge, 
between two hedges of dead bodies. 

** Our rearguard is in full retreat,” cried the major. There 
is no hope left! ” 

“I have spared your traveling carriage, Philip,” said a 
friendly voice. 

Sucy turned and saw the young aide-de-camp by the light 
of the flames. 

“Oh, it is all over with us,” he answered. “They have 
eaten ray horse. And how am I to make this sleepy general 
and his wife stir a step? ” 

“ Take a brand, Philip, and threaten them.” 

“Threaten the Countess?-” 

“Good-bye,” cried the aide-de-camp; “I have only just 
time to get across that unlucky river, and go I must, there is 

ray mother in France !- What a night! This herd of 

wretches would rather lie here in the snow, and most of them 

would sooner be buried alive than get up- It is four o’clock, 

Philip ! In two hours the Russians will begin to move, and 
you will see the Beresina covered with corpses a second time, 
I can tell you. You haven’t a horse, and you cannot carry 
the Countess, so come along with me,” he went on, taking 
his friend by the arm. 

“ My dear fellow, how am I to leave Stephanie! ” 

Major de Sucy grasped the Countess, set her on her feet, 
and shook her roughly; he was in despair. He compelled 
her to wake, and she stared at him with dull fixed eyes. 

“ Stephanie, we must go, or we shall die here ! ” 

For all answer the Countess tried to sink down again and 
sleep on the earth. The aide-de-camp snatched a brand from 
the fire and shook it in her face. 





FAREWELL. 


335 


We must save her in spite of herself,” cried Philip, and 
he carried her in his arms to the carriage. He came back to 
entreat his friend to help him, and the two young men took 
the old general and put him beside his wife, without knowing 
whether he were alive or dead. The major rolled th^ men 
over as they crouched on the earth, took away the plundered 
clothing, and heaped it upon the husband and wife, then he 
flung some of the broiled fragments of horseflesh into a 
corner of the carriage. 

‘‘Now, what do you mean to do?” asked his friend, the 
aide-de-camp. 

“ Drag them along! ” answered Sucy. 

“You are mad ! ” 

“You are right ! ” exclaimed Philip, folding his arms on 
his breast. 

Suddenly a desperate plan occurred to him. 

“ Look you here I ” he said, grasping his sentinel by the 
un wounded arm, “I leave her in your care for one hour. Bear 
in mind that you must die sooner than let any one, no matter 
whom, come near the carriage I ” 

The major seized a handful of the lady’s diamonds, drew his 
sabre, and violently battered those who seemed to him to be the 
bravest among the sleepers. By this means he succeeded in 
rousing the gigantic grenadier and a couple of men whose 
rank and regiment were undiscoverable. 

“It is all up with us ! ” he cried. 

“Of course it is,” returned the grenadier; “but that is all 
one to me.” 

“Very well then, if die you must, isn’t it better to sell 
your life for a pretty woman, and stand a chance of going 
back to France again ? ” 

“ I would rather go to sleep,” said one of the men, drop¬ 
ping down into the snow; “ and if you worry me again, major, 
I shall stick my toasting-iron into your belly ! ” 

“What is it all about, sir?” asked the grenadier. “The 


336 


FAJ^£ WELL. 


man’s drunk. He is a Parisian, and likes to lie in the lap of 
luxury.” 

You shall have these, good fellow,” said the major, hold¬ 
ing out a river of diamonds, “ if you will follow me and 
fight like a madman. The Russians are not ten minutes away ; 
they have horses; we will march up to the nearest battery 
and carry off two stout ones.” 

How about the sentinels, major?” 

“ One of us three-” he began ; then he turned from the 

soldier and looked at the aide-de-camp. You are coming, 
aren’t you, Hippolyte?” 

Hippolyte nodded assent. 

‘‘One of us,” the major went on, “will look after the 
sentry. Besides, perhaps those blessed Russians are also fast 
asleep. ’ ’ 

“ All right, major; you are a good sort! But will you take 
me in your carriage?” asked the grenadier. 

“ Yes, if you don’t leave your bones up yonder. If I come 
to grief, promise me, you two, that you will do everything in 
your power to save the Countess.” 

“All right,” said the grenadier. 

They set out for the Russian lines, taking the direction of 
the batteries that had so cruelly raked the mass of miserable 
creatures huddled together by the river bank. A few minutes 
later the hoofs of two galloping horses rang on the frozen 
snow, and the awakened battery fired a volley that passed 
over the heads of tlie sleepers; the hoof-beats rattled so fast 
on the iron ground that they sounded like the hammering in 
a smithy. The generous aide-de-camp had fallen ; the stalwart 
grenadier had come off safe and sound; and Philip himself 
had received a bayonet thrust in the shoulder while defending 
his friend. Notwithstanding his wound, he clung to his horse’s 
mane, and gripped him with his knees so tightly that the 
animal was held as in a vice. 

“God be praised!” cried the major, when he saw his 



FAREWELL. 


33 !? 

soldier still on the spot, and the carriage standing where he 
had left it. 

“ If you do the right thing by me, sir, you will get me the 
cross for this. We have treated them to a sword dance to a 
pretty tune from the rifle, eh? ” 

‘‘ We have done nothing yet ! Let us put the horses in. 
Take hold of these cords.” 

“ They are not long enough.” 

‘‘All right, grenadier, just go and overhaul those fellows 
sleeping there ; take their shawls, sheets, anything-” 

“I say! the rascal is dead,” cried the grenadier, as he 
plundered the first man who came to hand. “ Why, they are 
all dead ! how queer I ” 

“ All of them ? ” 

“ Yes, every one. It looks as though horseflesh on snow 
was indigestible.” 

Philip shuddered at the words. The night had grown 
twice as cold as before. 

“ Great heaven ! to lose her when I have saved her life a 
score of times already.” 

He shook the Countess. “Stephanie! Stephanie!” he 
cried. 

She opened her eyes. 

“ We are saved, madame ! ” 

“Saved ! ” she echoed, and fell back again. 

The horses were harnessed after a fashion at last. The 
major held his sabre in his unwounded hand, took the reins 
in the other, saw to his pistols, and sprang on one of the 
horses, while the grenadier mounted the other. The old sen¬ 
tinel had been pushed into the carriage, and lay across the 
knees of the general and the Countess; his feet were frozen. 
Urged on by blows from the flat of the sabre, the horses 
dragged the carriage at a mad gallop down to the plain, 
where endless difficulties awaited them. Before long it became 
almost impossible to advance without crushing sleeping men, 
22 



338 


FAREWELL. 


women, and even children at every step, all of whom declinea 
to stir when the grenadier awakened them. In vain M. de 
Sucy looked for the track that the rearguard had cut through 
this dense crowd of human beings; there was no more sign 
of their passage than of the wake of a ship in the sea. The 
horses could only move at a foot-pace, and were stopped most 
frequently by soldiers, who threatened to kill them. 

“ Do you mean to get there? ” asked the grenadier. 

“Yes, if it costs every drop of blood in my body! if it 
costs the whole world ! ” the major answered. 

“ Forward, then I- You can’t have the omelette without 

breaking eggs.” And the grenadier of the Garde urged on 
the horses over the prostrate bodies and upset the bivouacs; 
the blood-stained wheels ploughing that field of faces left a 
double furrow of dead. But in justice it should be said that 
he never ceased to thunder out his warning cry, “ Carrion I 
lookout!” 

“ Poor wretches ! ” exclaimed the major. 

“ Bah I That way, or the cold, or the cannon 1 ” said the 
grenadier, goading on the horses with the point of his sword. 

Then came the catastrophe, which must have happened 
sooner but for miraculous good fortune; the carriage was 
overturned, and all further progress was stopped at once. 

“ I expected as much ! ” exclaimed the imperturable grena¬ 
dier. “ Oho ! he is dead ! ” he added, looking at his comrade. 

“ Poor Laurent 1 ” said the major. 

“Laurent! Wasn’t he in the Fifth Chasseurs?” 

“Yes.” 

“ My own cousin. Pshaw I this beastly life is not so 
pleasant that one need be sorry for him as things go.” 

But all this time the carriage lay overturned, and the horses 
were only released after great and irreparable loss of time. 
The shock had been so violent that the Countess had been 
awakened by it, and the subsequent commotion aroused her 
from her stupor. She shook off the rugs and rose. 



FA7^£ WELL. 


339 


“Where are we, Philip?” she asked in musical tones, as 
she looked about her. 

“About five hundred paces from the bridge. We are just 
about to cross the Beresina. When we are on the other side, 
Stephanie, I will not tease you any more; I will let you go to 
sleep; we shall be in safety, we can go on to Wilna in peace. 
God grant that you may never know what your life has cost! ” 

“You are wounded ! ” 

“ A mere trifle.” 

The hour of doom had come. The Russian cannon an¬ 
nounced the day. The Russians were in possession of Stud- 
zianka, and thence were raking the plain with grapeshot; and 
by the first dim light of the dawn the major saw two columns 
moving and forming above on the heights. Then a cry of 
horror went up from the crowd, and in a moment every one 
sprang to his feet. Each instinctively felt his danger, and all 
made a rush for the bridge, surging toward it like a wave. 

Then the Russians came down upon them, swift as a con¬ 
flagration. Men, women, children, and horses all crowded 
towards the river. Luckily for the major and the Countess, 
they were still at some distance from the bank. General Eble 
had just set fire to the bridge on the other side; but in spite 
of all the warnings given to those who rushed towards the 
chance of salvation, not one among them could or would 
draw back. The overladen bridge gave way, and not only so, 
the impetus of the frantic living wave towards that fatal bank 
was such that a dense crowd of human beings was thrust into 
the water as if by an avalanche. The sound of a single human 
cry could not be distinguished ; there was a dull crash as if an 
enormous stone had fallen into the water, and the Beresina 
was covered with corpses. 

The violent recoil of those in front, striving to escape this 
death, brought them into hideous collision with those behind 
them, who w'ere pressing towards the bank, and many were 
suffocated and crushed. The Comte and Comtesse de Van- 


340 


FAREWELL. 


dieres owed their lives to the carriage. The horses that had 
trampled and crushed so many dying men were crushed and 
trampled to death in their turn by the human maelstrom 
which eddied from the bank. Sheer physical strength saved 
the major and the grenadier. They killed others in self- 
defense. That wild sea of human faces and living bodies, 
surging to and fro as by one impulse, left the bank of the 
Beresina clear for a few moments. The multitude had hurled 
themselves back on the plain. Some few men sprang down 
from the banks towards the river, not so much with any hope 
of reaching the opposite shore, which for them meant France, 
as from dread of the wastes of Siberia. For some bold spirits 
despair became a panoply. An officer leaped from hummock 
to hummock of ice, and reached the other shore \ one of the 
soldiers scrambled over miraculously on the piles of dead 
bodies and drift ice. But the immense multitude left behind 
saw at last that the Russians would not slaughter twenty thou¬ 
sand unarmed men, too numb with the cold to attempt to 
resist them, and each awaited his fate with dreadful apathy. 
By this time the major and his grenadier, the old general and 
his wife were left to themselves not very far from the place 
where the bridge had been. All four stood dry-eyed and 
silent among the heaps of dead. A few able-bodied men and 
one or two officers, who had recovered all their energies at 
this crisis, gathered about them. The group was sufficiently 
large ; there were about fifty men all told. A couple of hun¬ 
dred paces from them stood the wreck of the artillery bridge, 
which had broken down the day before; the major saw this, 
and Let us make a raft ! ” he cried. 

The words were scarcely out of his mouth before the whole 
group hurried to the ruins of the bridge. A crowd of men 
began to pick up iron clamps and to hunt for planks and ropes 
—for all the materials for a raft, in short. A score of armed 
men and officers, under command of the major, stood on 
guard to protect the workers from any desperate attempt on 


FAREWELL, 


341 


the part of the multitude if they should guess their design. 
The longing for freedom, which inspires prisoners to accom¬ 
plish impossibilities, cannot be compared with the hope which 
lent energy at that moment to these forlorn Frenchmen. 

‘^The Russians are upon us! Here are the Russians!” 
the guard shouted to the workers. 

The timbers creaked, the raft grew larger, stronger, and 
more substantial. Generals, colonels, and common soldiers all 
alike bent beneath the weight of wagon-wheels, chains, coils 
of rope, and planks of timber; it was a m.odern realization of 
the building of Noah’s ark. The young Countess, sitting by 
her husband’s side, looked on, regretful that she could do 
nothing to aid the workers, though she helped to knot the 
lengths of rope together. 

At last the raft was finished. Forty men launched it out 
into the river, while ten of the soldiers held the ropes that 
must keep it moored to the shore. The moment that they 
saw their handiwork floating on the Beresina, they sprang 
down on to it from the bank with callous selfishness. The 
major, dreading the frenzy of the first rush, held back Ste¬ 
phanie and the general; but a shudder ran through him when 
he saw the landing place black with people, and men crowd¬ 
ing down like play-goers into the pit of a theatre. 

‘‘It was I who thought of the raft, you savages 1 ” he cried. 
“ I have saved your lives, and you will not make room for me ! ” 

A confused murmur was the only answer. The men at the 
edge took up stout poles, thrust them against the bank with 
all their might, so as to shove the raft out and gain an impetus 
at its starting upon a journey across a sea of floating ice and 
dead bodies towards the other shore. 

“God’s thunder! I will knock some of you off into the 
water if you don’t make room for the major and his two 
companions,” shouted the grenadier. He raised his sabre 
threateningly, delayed the departure, and made the men stand 
closer together, in spite of threatening yells, 


342 


FAREWELL. 


“I shall fall in!- I shall go overboard!-” the 

fellows shouted. 

‘‘ Let us start! Put off! ” 

The major gazed with tearless eyes at the woman he loved; 
an impulse of sublime resignation raised her eyes to heaven. 

To die with you! ” she said. 

In the situation of the folk upon the raft there was a certain 
comic element. They might utter hideous yells, but not one 
of them dared to oppose the grenadier, for they were packed 
together so tightly that if one man were knocked down, the 
whole raft might capsize. At this delicate crisis, a captain 
tried to rid himself of one of his neighbors; the man saw the 
hostile intention of his officer, collared him, and pitched him 

overboard. ^‘Aha! The duck has a mind to drink- 

Over with you ! There is room for two now ! ” he shouted. 

Quick, major ! throw your little woman over, and come ! 
Never mind that old dotard ; he will drop off to-morrow ! ” 

Be quick! ” cried a voice, made up of a hundred voices. 

“ Come, major! Those fellows are making a fuss, and 
well they may! ” 

The Comte de Vandieres flung off his ragged blankets, and 
stood before them in his general’s uniform. 

“ Let us save the Count,” said Philip. 

Stephanie grasped his hand tightly in hers, flung her arms 
about, and clasped him close in an agonized embrace. 

Farewell! ” she said. 

Then each knew the other’s thoughts. The Comte de 
Vandieres recovered his energies and presence of mind suffi¬ 
ciently to jump on to the raft, whither Stephanie followed 
him after one last look at Philip. 

‘‘ Major, won’t you take my place ? I do not care a straw 
for life; I have neither wife, nor child, nor mother belonging 
to me-” 

I give them into your charge,” cried the major, indicate, 
ing the Count and his wife. 




FAREWELL. 


343 


“ Be easy; I will take as much care of them as of the apple 
of my eye.” 

Philip stood stock-still on the bank. The raft sped so 
violently towards the opposite shore that it ran aground with 
a violent shock to all on board. The Count, standing on the 
very edge, was shaken into the stream ; and as he fell, a mass 
of ice swept by and struck off his head, and sent it flying like 
a ball. 

Hey ! major ! ” shouted the grenadier. 

Farewell! ” a woman’s voice called aloud. 

An icy shiver of dread ran through Philip de Sucy, and he 
dropped down where he stood, overcome with cold and sorrow 
and weariness. 

“ My poor niece went out of her mind,” the doctor added 
after a brief pause. ‘‘Ah ! monsieur,” he went on, grasping 
M. d’Albon’s hand, “what a fearful life for the poor little 
thing, so young, so delicate ! An unheard-of misfortune 
separated her from that grenadier of the Garde (Fleuriot by 
name), and for two years she was dragged on after the army, 
the laughing-stock of a rabble of outcasts. She went barefoot, 
I heard, ill-clad, neglected, and starved for months at a time; 
sometimes confined in a hospital, sometimes living like a 
hunted animal. God alone knows all the misery which she 
endured, and yet she lives. She was shut up in a mad-house 
in a little German town, while her relations, believing her to 
be dead, were dividing her property here in France. 

“In i8i6 the grenadier Fleuriot recognized her in an inn 
in Strasbourg. She had just managed to escape from cap¬ 
tivity. Some peasants told him that the Countess had lived 
for a whole month in a forest, and how that they had tracked 
her and tried to catch her without success. 

“ I was at that time not many leagues from Strasbourg; and 
hearing the talk about this girl in the woods, I wished to verify 
the strange facts that had given rise to absurd stories. What 


344 


FAREWELL, 


was my feeling when I beheld the Countess? Fleuriot told 
me all that he knew of the piteous story. I took the poor 
fellow with my niece into Auvergne, and there I had the mis¬ 
fortune to lose him. He had some ascendency over Mme. de 
Vandieres. He alone succeeded in persuading her to wear 
clothes; and in those days her one word of human speech— 
Farewell —she seldom uttered. Fleuriot set himself to the 
task of awakening certain associations; but there he failed 
completely; he drew that one sorrowful word from her a little 
more frequently, that was all. But the old grenadier could 
amuse her, and devoted himself to playing with her, and 

through him I hoped; but-” here Stephanie’s uncle broke 

off. After a moment he went on again. 

“ Here she has found another creature with whom she 
seems to have an understanding—an idiot peasant girl, who 
once, in spite of her plainness and imbecility, fell in love with 
a mason. The mason thouglit of marrying her because she 
had a little bit of land, and for a whole year poor Genevieve 
was the happiest of living creatures. She dressed in her best, 
and danced on Sundays with Ballot; she understood love; 
there was room for love in her heart and brain. But Ballot 
thought better of it. He found another girl who had all her 
senses and rather more land than Genevieve, and he forsook 
Genevieve for her. Then the poor thing lost the little intel¬ 
ligence that love had developed in her; she can do nothing 
now but cut grass and look after the cattle. My niece and 
the poor girl are in some sort bound to each other by the in¬ 
visible chain of their common destiny, and by their madness 
due to the same cause. Just come here a moment; look ! ” 
and Stephanie’s uncle led the Marquis d’Albon to the window. 

There, in fact, the magistrate beheld the pretty Countess 
sitting on the ground at Genevieve’s knee, while the peasant 
girl was wholly absorbed in combing out Stephanie’s long, 
black hair with a huge comb. The Countess submitted her¬ 
self to thisj uttering 'low smothered cries that expressed her 



FAREWELL. 


345 


enjoyment of the sensation of physical comfort. A shudder 
ran through M. d’Albon as he saw her attitude of languid 
abandonment, the animal supineness that revealed an utter 
lack of intelligence. 

“Oh! Philip, Philip!” he cried, “past troubles are as 
nothing. Is it quite hopeless? ” he asked. 

The doctor raised his eyes to heaven. 

“ Good-bye, monsieur,” said M. d’Albon, pressing the old 
man’s hand. “ My friend is expecting me ; you will see him 
here before very long.” 

“Then it is Stephanie herself?” cried Sucy when the 
Marquis had spoken the first few words. “Ah ! until now I 
did not feel sure ! ” he added. Tears filled the dark eyes 
that were wont to wear a stern expression. 

“ Yes; she is the Comtesse de Vandieres,” his friend replied. 

The colonel started up and hurriedly began to dress. 

“Why, Philip!” cried the horrified magistrate. “Are 
you going mad ? ” 

“ I am quite well now,” said the colonel simply. “ This 
news has soothed all my bitterest grief; what pain could hurt 
me while I think of Stephanie ? I am going over to the 
Minorite convent, to see her and to speak to her, to restore 
her to health again. She is free ; ah, surely, surely, happi¬ 
ness will smile on us, or there is no Providence above. How 
can you think that she could hear my voice, poor Stephanie, 
and not recover her reason ? ” 

“ She has seen you once already, and she did not recognize 
you,” the magistrate answered gently, trying to suggest some 
wholesome fears to his friend, whose hopes were visibly too high. 

The colonel shuddered, but he began to smile again, with 
a slight involuntary gesture of incredulity. Nobody ventured 
to oppose his plans, and a few hours later he had taken up his 
abode in the old priory, to be near the doctor and the Com¬ 
tesse de Vandieres. 


M 


346 


FAREWELL. 


“ Where is she ? ” he cried at once. 

‘‘ Hush ! ” answered M. Fanjat, Stephanie’s uncle. ‘‘She 
is sleeping. Stay; here she is.” 

Philip saw the poor distraught sleeper crouching on a stone 
bench in the sun. Her thick hair, straggling over her face, 
screened it from the glare and heat ; her arms dropped lan¬ 
guidly to the earth ; she lay at ease as gracefully as a fawn, 
her feet tucked up beneath her ; her bosom rose and fell with 
her even breathing; there was the same transparent white¬ 
ness as of porcelain in her skin and complexion that we so 
often admire in children’s faces. Genevieve sat there motion¬ 
less, holding a spray that Stephanie doubtless had brought 
down from the top of one of the tallest poplars; the idiot girl 
was waving the green branch above her, driving away the flies 
from her sleeping companion, and gently fanning her. 

She stared at M. Fanjat and the colonel as they came up; 
then, like a dumb animal that recognizes its master, she 
slowly turned her face towards the Countess, and watched 
over her as before, showing not the slightest sign of intelli¬ 
gence or of astonishment. The air was scorching. The glit¬ 
tering particles of the stone bench shone like sparks of fire ; 
the meadow sent up the quivering vapors that hover above 
the grass and gleam like golden dust when they catch the 
light, but Genevieve did not seem to feel the raging heat. 

The colonel wrung M. Fanjat’s hands; the tears that gath¬ 
ered in the soldier’s eyes stole down his cheeks, and fell on 
the grass at Stephanie’s feet. 

“Sir,” said her uncle, “for these two years my heart has 
been broken daily. Before very long you will be as I am ; 
if you do not weep, you will not feel your anguish the less.” 

“You have taken care of her ! ” said the colonel, and jeal¬ 
ousy no less than gratitude could be read in his eyes. 

The two men understood one another. They grasped each 
other by the hand again, and stood motionless, gazing in 
admiration at the serenity that slumber had brought into the 


FAREWELL. 


347 


lovely face before them. Stephanie heaved a sigh from time 
to time, and this sigh, that had all the appearance of sensi¬ 
bility, made the unhappy colonel tremble with gladness. 

Alas ! ” M. Fanjat said gently, “ do not deceive yourself, 
monsieur; as you see her now, she is in full possession of 
such reason as she has.” 

Those who have sat for whole hours absorbed in the delight 
of watching over the slumber of some tenderly-beloved one, 
whose waking eyes will smile for them, will doubtless under¬ 
stand the bliss and anguish that shook the colonel. For him 
this slumber was an illusion, the waking must be a kind of 
death, the most dreadful of all deaths. 

Suddenly a kid frisked in two or three bounds towards the 
bench, and snuffed at Stephanie. The sound awakened her; 
she sprang lightly to her feet without scaring away the capri¬ 
cious creature; but as soon as she saw Philip she fled, fol¬ 
lowed by her four-footed playmate, to a thicket of elder trees; 
then she uttered a little cry like the note of a startled 
wild-bird, the same sound that the colonel had heard once 
before near the grating, when the Countess appeared to M. 
d’Albon for the first time. At length she climbed into a 
laburnum tree, ensconced herself in the feathery greenery, 
and peered at the strange mafi with as much interest as the 
most inquisitive nightingale in the forest. 

‘‘Farewell, farewell, farewell,” she said, but the soul sent 
no trace of expression of feeling through the words, spoken 
with the careless intonation of a bird’s notes. 

“She does not know me!” the colonel exclaimed in 

despair. “Stephanie! Here is Philip, your Philip!- 

Philip!” and the poor soldier went towards the laburnum 
tree ; but when he stood three paces away, the Countess eyed 
him almost defiantly, though there was timidity in her eyes; 
then at a bound she sprang from the laburnum to an acacia, 
and thence to a spruce-fir, swinging from bough to bough with 
marvelous dexterity. 



348 


FAREWELL. 


“ Do not follow her,” said M. Fanjat, addressing the 
colonel. “ You would arouse a feeling of aversion in her 
which might become insurmountable; I will help you to make 
her acquaintance and to tame her. Sit down on the bench. 
If you pay no heed whatever to her, poor child, it will not be 
long before you will see her come nearer by degrees to look 
at you.” 

‘‘ That she should not know me ! that she should fly from 
me ! ” the colonel repeated, sitting down on a rustic bench 
and leaning his back against a tree that overshadowed it. 

He bowed his head. The doctor remained silent. Before 
very long the Countess stole softly down from her high refuge 
in the spruce-fir, flitting like a will-of-the-wisp; for, as the 
wind stirred through the boughs, she lent herself at times to 
the swaying movements of the trees. At each branch she 
stopped and peered at the stranger; but as she saw him sitting 
motionless, she at length jumped down to the grass, stood a 
while, and came slowly across the meadow. When she took 
up her position by a tree about ten paces from the bench, M. 
Fanjat spoke to the colonel in a low voice. 

“ Feel in my pocket for some lumps of sugar,” he said, 
“and let her see them, she will come; I willingly give up to 
you the pleasure of giving her sweetmeats. She is passion* 
ately fond of sugar, and by that means you will accustom her 
to come to you and to know you.” 

“ She never cared for sweet things when she was a 
woman,” Philip answered sadly. 

When he held out the lump of sugar between his thumb 
and finger, and shook it, Stephanie uttered the wild note 
again, and sprang quickly towards him; then she stopped 
short, there was a conflict between longing for the sweet 
morsel and instinctive fear of him ; she looked at the sugar, 
turned her head away, and looked again like an unfortunate 
dog forbidden to touch some scrap of food, while his master 
slowly recites the greater part of the alphabet until he reaches 


FAREWELL. 


349 


the letter that gives permission. At length animal appetite 
conquered fear ; Stephanie rushed to Philip, held out a dainty 
brown hand to pounce upon the coveted morsel, touched her 
lover’s fingers, snatched the piece of sugar, and vanished with 
it into a thicket. This painful scene was too much for the 
colonel j he burst into tears, and took refuge in the drawing¬ 
room. 

“Then has love less courage than affection?” M. Fanjat 
asked him. “ I have hope, Monsieur le Baron. My poor 
niece was once in a far more pitiable state than at present.” 

“Is it possible?” cried Philip. 

“ She would not wear clothes,” answered the doctor. 

The colonel shuddered, and his face grew pale. To the 
doctor’s mind this pallor was an unhealthy symptom ; he went 
over to him and felfhis pulse, M. de Sucy was in a high 
fever; by dint of persuasion, he succeeded in putting the 
patient in bed, and gave him a few drops of laudanum to gain 
repose and sleep. 

The Baron de Sucy spent nearly a week, in a constant 
struggle with a deadly anguish, and before long he had no 
tears left to shed. He was often wellnigh heart-broken; he 
could not grow accustomed to the sight of the Countess’ mad¬ 
ness ; but he made terms for himself, as it were, in this cruel 
position, and sought alleviations in his pain. His heroism 
was boundless. He found courage to overcome Stephanie’s 
wild shyness by choosing sweetmeats for her, and devoted all 
his thoughts to this, bringing these dainties, and following up 
the little victories that he set himself to gain over Stephanie’s 
instincts (the last gleam of intelligence in her), until he suc¬ 
ceeded to some extent—she grew tamer than ever before. 
Every morning the colonel went into the park; and if, after 
a long search for the Countess, he could not discover the tree 
in which she was rocking herself gently, nor the nook where 
she lay crouching at play with some bird, nor the roof where 
she had perched herself, he would whistle the well-known air 


.850 


FAREWELL. 


Fartant pour la Syrie, which recalled old memories of their 
love, and Stephanie would run towards him lightly as a fawn. 
She saw the colonel so often that she was no longer afraid of 
him; before very long she would sit on his knee with her 
thin, lithe arms about him. And while thus they sat as lovers 
love to do, Philip doled out sweetmeats one by one to the 
eager Countess. When they were all finished, the fancy often 
took Stephanie to search through her lover’s pockets with a 
monkey’s quick instinctive dexterity, till she had assured her¬ 
self that there was nothing left, and then she gazed at Philip 
with vacant eyes; there was no thought, no gratitude in their 
clear depths. Then she would play with him. She tried to 
take off his boots to see his foot; she tore his gloves to shreds, 
and put on his hat; and she would let him pass his hands 
through her hair, and take her in his arms, and submit pas¬ 
sively to his passionate kisses, and at last, if he shed tears, 
she would gaze silently at him. 

She quite understood the signal when he whistled Fartant 
pour la Syrie, but he could never succeed in inducing her to 
pronounce her own name— Stephanie. Philip persevered in 
his heart-rending task, sustained by a hope that never left him. 
If on some bright autumn morning he saw her sitting quietly 
on a bench under a poplar tree, grown brown now as the 
season wore, the unhappy lover would lie at her feet and gaze 
into her eyes as long as she would let him gaze, hoping that 
some spark of intelligence might gleam from them. At times 
he lent himself to an illusion; he would imagine that he saw the 
hard, changeless light in them falter, that there was a new life 
and softness in them, and he would cry, ‘‘Stephanie! oh, 
Stephanie ! you hear me, you see me, do you not ? ” 

But for her the sound of his voice was like any other sound, 
the stirring of the wind in the trees, or the lowing of the cow 
on which she scrambled; and the colonel wrung his hands in 
a despair that lost none of its bitterness; nay, time and these 
vain efforts only added to his anguish. 


FAREWELL. 


351 


One evening, under the quiet sky, in the midst of the 
silence and peace of the forest hermitage, M. Fanjat sav/ from 
a distance that the Baron was busy loading a pistol, and knew 
that the lover had given up all hope. The blood surged to 
the old doctor's heart; and if he overcame the dizzy sensa¬ 
tion that seized on him, it was because he would rather see his 
niece live with a disordered brain than lose her for ever. He 
hurried to the place. 

‘‘ What are you doing ? ” he cried. 

^‘That is for me,” the colonel answered, pointing to a 
loaded pistol on the bench, ‘‘ and this is for her ! ” he added, 
as he rammed down the wad into the pistol that he held in 
his hands. 

The Countess lay stretched out on the ground, playing 
with the balls. 

^‘Then you do not know that last night, as she slept, she 
murmured ^Philip?’” said the doctor quietly, dissembling 
his alarm. 

“She called my name?” cried the Baron, letting his 
weapon fall. Stephanie picked it up, but he snatched it out 
of her hands, caught the other pistol from the bench and 
fled. 

“ Poor little one I ” exclaimed the doctor, rejoicing that 
his stratagem had succeeded so well. He held her tightly to 
his heart as he went on. “ He would have killed you, selfish 
that he is ! He wants you to die because he is unhappy. He 
cannot learn to love you for your own sake, little one ! We 
forgive him, do we not ? He is senseless ; you are only mad. 
Never mind; God alone shall take you to Himself. We look 
upon you as unhappy because you no longer share our miseries, 

fools that we are !- Why, she is happy,” he said, taking 

her on his knee; “ nothing troubles her; she lives like the 
birds, like the deer-” 

Stephanie sprang upon a young blackbird that was hopping 
about, caught it with a little shriek of glee, twisted its neck, 




352 


FAREWELL. 


looked at the dead bird, and dropped it at the foot of a tree 
without giving it another thought. 

The next morning at daybreak the colonel went out into 
the garden to look for Stephanie; hope was very strong in 
him. He did not see her, and whistled ; and when she came, 
he took her arm, and for the first time they walked together 
along an alley beneath the trees, while the fresh morning 
wind shook down the dead leaves about them. The colonel 
sat down, and Stephanie, of her own accord, lit upon his 
knee. Philip trembled with gladness. 

*‘Love!” he cried, covering her hands with passionate 

kisses, “I am Philip-” 

She looked curiously at him. 

‘‘Come close,” he added, as he held her tightly. “Do 
you feel the beating of my heart ? It has beat for you, for 
you only. I love you always. Philip is not dead. He is 
here. You are sitting on his knee. You are my Stephanie, 
I am your Philip ! ” 

“ Farewell ! ” she said, “ farewell ! ” 

The colonel shivered. He thought that some vibration of 
his highly-wrought feeling had surely reached his beloved; 
that the heart-rending cry drawn from him by hope, the utmost 
effort of a love that must last for ever, of passion in its ecstasy, 
striving to reach the soul of the woman he loved, must awaken 
her. 

“ Oh, Stephanie ! we shall be happy yet ! ” 

A cry of satisfaction broke from her, a dim light of intelli¬ 
gence gleamed in her eyes. 

“ She knows me ! Stephanie !-” 

The colonel felt his heart swell, and tears gathered under 
his eyelids. But all at once the Countess held up a bit of 
sugar for him to see; she had discovered it by searching dili¬ 
gently for it while he spoke. What he had mistaken for a 
human thought was a degree of reason required for a monkey’s 
mischievous trick! 




WELL, 


353 


Philip fainted. M. Fanjat found the Countess sitting on 
his prostrate body. She was nibbling her bit of sugar, giving 
expression to her enjoyment by little grimaces and gestures 
that would have been thought clever in a woman in full pos¬ 
session of her senses if she tried to mimic her paroquet or her 
cat. 

“ Oh, my friend ! ” cried Philip, when he came to himself. 

This is like death every moment of the day ! I love her 
too much ! I could bear anything if only through her mad¬ 
ness she had kept some little trace of womanhood. But, day 
after day, to see her like a wild animal, not even a sense of 
modesty left, to see her-” 

“ So you must have a theatrical madness, must you?” said 
the doctor sharply, ‘‘ and your prejudices are stronger than 
your lover’s devotion ? What, monsieur ! I resign to you the 
sad pleasure of giving my niece her food and the enjoyment 
of her playtime; I have kept for myself nothing but the most 
burdensome cares. I watch over her while you are asleep, 

I- Go, monsieur, and give up the task. Leave this dreary 

hermitage; I can live with my little darling; I understand 
her disease; I study her movements ; I know her secrets. 
Some day you will thank me.” 

The colonel left the Minorite convent, that he was destined 
to see only once again. The doctor was alarmed by the effect 
that his words made upon his guest; his niece’s lover 
became as dear to him as his niece. If either of them de¬ 
served to be pitied, that one was certainly Philip; did he not 
bear alone the burden of an appalling sorrow? 

The doctor made inquiries, and learned that the hapless 
colonel had retired to a country house of his near Saint-Ger¬ 
main. A dream had suggested to him a plan for restoring the 
Countess to reason, and the doctor did not know that he was 
speeding the rest of the autumn in carrying out a vast scheme. 
A small stream ran through his park, and in the winter-time 
flooded a low-lying land, something like the plain on the 
23 




354 


FAREWELL. 


eastern side of the Beresina. The village of Satout, on the 
slope of a ridge above it, bounded the horizon of a picture of 
desolation, something as Studzianka lay on the heights that 
shut in the swamp of the Beresina. The colonel set laborers 
to work to make a channel to resemble the greedy river that 
had swallowed up the treasures of France and Napoleon’s 
army. By the help of his memories, Philip reconstructed on 
his own lands the bank where General Ebl6 had built his 
bridges. He drove in piles, and then set fire to them, so as 
to reproduce the charred and blackened balks of timber that 
on either side of the river told the stragglers that their retreat 
to France had been cut off. He had materials collected like 
the fragments out of which his comrades in misfortune had 
made the raft; his park was laid waste to complete the illu¬ 
sion on which his last hopes -were founded. He ordered 
ragged uniforms and clothing for several hundred peasants. 
Huts and bivouacs and batteries were raised and burned down. 
In short, he omitted no device that could reproduce that 
most hideous of all scenes. He succeeded. When, in the 
earliest days of December, snow covered the earth with a 
thick white mantle, it seemed to him that he saw the Beresina 
itself. The mimic Russia was so startlingly real, that several 
of his old comrades recognized the scene of their past suffer¬ 
ings. M. de Sucy kept the secret of the drama to be enacted 
with this tragical background, but it was looked upon as a 
mad freak on his part, in several of the leading circles of 
society in Paris. 

In the early days of the month of January, 1820, the colonel 
drove over to the Forest of I’Isle-Adam in a carriage like the 
one in which M. and Mme. de Vandieres had driven from 
Moscow to Studzianka. The horses closely resembled that 
other pair that he had risked his life to bring from the Russian 
lines. He himself wore the grotesque and soiled clothes, 
accoutrements, and cap that he had worn on the 29th of 
November, 1812. He had even allowed his hair and beard 


FAREWELL. 


355 


to grow, and neglected his appearance, that no detail might 
be lacking to recall the scene in all its horror. 

“ I guessed what you meant to do,” cried M. Fanjat, when 
he saw the colonel dismount. you mean your plan to 

succeed, do not let her see you in that carriage. This evening 
I will give my niece a little laudanum, and while she sleeps 
we will dress her in such clothes as she wore at Studzianka, 
and put her in your traveling carriage. I will follow you in a 
berline.” 

Soon after two o’clock in the morning, the young Countess 
was lifted into the carriage, laid on the cushions, and wrapped 
in a coarse blanket. A few peasants held torches while this 
strange elopement was arranged. 

A sudden cry rang through the silence of night, and Philip 
and the doctor, turning, saw Genevieve. She had come out 
half-dressed from the low room where she slept. 

“Farewell, farewell; it is all over, farewell ! ” she called, 
crying bitterly. 

“Why, Genevieve, what is it ? ” asked M. Fanjat. 

Genevidve shook her head despairingly, raised her arm to 
heaven, looked at the carriage, uttered a long snarling sound, 
and, with evident signs of profound terror, slunk in again. 

“’Tis a good omen,” cried the colonel. “The girl is 
sorry to lose her companion. Very likely she sees that Ste¬ 
phanie is about to recover her reason.” 

“God grant it maybe so!” answered M. Fanjat, who 
seemed to be affected by this incident. Since insanity had 
interested him, he had known several cases in which a spirit 
of prophecy and the gift of second-sight had been accorded 
to a disordered brain—two faculties which many travelers tell 
us are also found among savage tribes. 

So it happened that, as the colonel had foreseen and ar¬ 
ranged, Stephanie traveled across the mimic Beresina about 
nine o’clock in the morning, and was awakened by an explo¬ 
sion of rockets about a hundred paces from the scene of action. 


356 


FAREWELL, 


It was a signal. Hundreds of peasants raised a terrible clamor, 
like the despairing shouts that startled the Russians when 
twenty thousand stragglers learned that by their own fault 
they were delivered over to death or to slavery. 

When the Countess heard the report and the cries that 
followed she sprang out of the carriage and rushed in frenzied 
anguish over the snow-covered plain; she saw the burned 
bivouacs and the fatal raft about to be launched on a frozen 
Beresina. She saw Major Philip brandishing his sabre among 
the crowd. The cry that broke from Mme. de Vandieres 
made the blood run cold in the veins of all who heard it. 
She stood face to face with the colonel, who watched her with 
a beating heart. At first she stared blankly at the strange 
scene about her, then she reflected. For an instant, brief as 
a lightning flash, there was the same quick gaze and total lack 
of comprehension that we see in the bright eyes of a bird ; 
then she passed her hand across her forehead with the intelli¬ 
gent expression of a thinking being; she looked round on the 
memories that had taken substantial form, into the past life 
that had been transported into her present; she turned her 
face to Philip—and saw him ! An awed silence fell upon the 
crowd. The colonel breathed hard, but dared not speak; 
tears filled the doctor’s eyes. A faint color overspread Ste¬ 
phanie’s beautiful face, deepening slowly, till at last she 
glowed like a girl radiant with youth. Still the bright flush 
grew. Life and joy, kindled within her as the blaze of intel¬ 
ligence, swept through her like leaping flames. A convulsive 
tremor ran from her feet to her heart. But all these tokens, 
which flashed on the sight in a moment, gathered and gained 
consistence, as it were, when Stephanie’s eyes gleamed with 
heavenly radiance, the light of a soul within. She lived, she 
thought! She shuddered—was it with fear? God Himself 
unloosed a second time the tongue that had been bound by 
death, and set His fire anew in the extinguished soul. The 


FAREWELL. 


357 


electric torrent of the human will vivified the body whence it 
had so long been absent. 

“ Stephanie ! ” the colonel cried. 

“ Oh ! it is Philip ! ” said the poor Countess. 

She fled to the trembling arms held out towards her, and 
the embrace of the two lovers frightened those who beheld it. 
Stephanie burst into tears. 

Suddenly the tears ceased to flow; she lay in his arms a 
dead weight, as if stricken by a thunderbolt, and said faintly— 

“ Farewell, Philip !- I love you- farewell ! ” 

She is dead ! ” cried the colonel, unclasping his arms. 

The old doctor received the lifeless body of his niece in his 
arms as a young man might have done; he carried her to a 
stack of wood and set her down. He looked at her face, and 
laid a feeble hand, tremulous with agitation, upon her heart 
—it beat no longer. 

‘‘ Can it really be so ? ” he said, looking from the colonel, 
who stood there motionless, to Stephanie’s face. Death had 
invested it with a radiant beauty, a transient aureole, the 
pledge, it may be, of a glorious life to come. 

“ Yes, she is dead.” 

“ Oh, but that smile ! ” cried Philip; only see that smile. 
Is it possible ? ” 

“ She has grown cold already,” answered M. Fanjat. 

M. de Sucy made a few strides to tear himself from the 
sight; then he stopped, and whistled the air that the mad 
Stephanie had understood ; and when he saw that she did 
not rise and hasten to him, he walked away, staggering like a 
drunken man, still whistling, but he did not turn again. 

In society General dc Sucy is looked upon as very agree¬ 
able, and, above all things, as very lively and amusing. Not 
very long ago a lady complimented him upon his good humor 
and equable temper. 



358 


FAREWELL. 


Ah ! madame,” he answered, ‘‘*1 pay very dearly for my 
merriment in the evening if I am alone.” 

‘‘Then, you are never alone, I suppose.” 

“ No,” he answered, smiling. 

If a keen observer of human nature could have seen the 
look that Sucy’s face wore at that moment, he would, without 
doubt, have shuddered. 

“Why do you not marry? ” the lady asked (she had sev¬ 
eral daughters of her own at a boarding-school). “You are 
wealthy; you belong to an old and noble house; you are 
clever; you have a future before you; everything smiles upon 
you.” 

“Yes,” he answered ; “ one smile is killing me-” 

On the morrow the lady heard with amazement that M. de 
Sucy had shot himself through the head that night. 

The fashionable world discussed the extraordinary news in 
divers ways, and each had a theory to account for it; play, 
love, ambition, irregularities in private life, according to the 
taste of the speaker, explained the last act of the tragedy be¬ 
gan in 1812. Two men alone, a magistrate and an old doctor, 
knew that Monsieur le Comte de Sucy was one of those souls 
unhappy in the strength God gives them to enable them to 
triumph daily in a ghastly struggle with a mysterious horror. 
If for a moment God withdraws His sustaining hand, they 
succumb. 


Paris, March, 1830. 



A SEASIDE TRAGEDY * 

(JJn Dr ante au bord de la mer.') 


To Madam( la Princesse Caroline Galitzin de 
Genthody nee Com/esse Walewska, this souvenir of 
the Author is respectfully dedicated. 

The young for the most part delight to measure the future 
with a pair of compasses of their own ; when the strength of 
the will equals the boldness of the angle that they thus pro¬ 
ject, the whole world is theirs. 

This phenomenon of mental existence takes place, however, 
only at a certain age, and that age, without exception, lies in 
the years between twenty-two and eight-and-twenty. It is an 
age of first conceptions, because it is an age of vast longings, 
an age which is doubtful of nothing; doubt at that time is a 
confession of weakness ; it passes as swiftly as the sowing 
time, and is followed by the age of execution. There are in 
some manner two periods of youth in every life—the 
youth of confident hopes, and the youth of action ; some¬ 
times in those whom nature has favored, the two ages coincide, 
and then we have a Caesar, a Newton, or a Bonaparte—the 
greatest among great men. 

I was measuring the space of time that a single thought 
needs for its development, and (compass in hand) stood on a 
crag a hundred fathoms above the sea, surveying my future, 
and filling it with great works, like an engineer who should 
survey an empty land, and cover it with fortresses and palaces. 
The sea was calm, the waves toyed with the reefs of rock. I 
had just dressed after a swim, and was waiting for Pauline, my 
guardian angel, who was bathing in a granite basin floored 
* A letter written by Louis Lambert. 


( 359 ) 


360 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


with fine sand, the daintiest bathing-place of nature’s 
fashioning for the sea-fairies. 

We were at the utmost extremity of Croisic-point, a tiny 
peninsula in Brittany; we were far from the haven itself, and 
in a part of the coast so inaccessible that the inland revenue 
department ignored it, and a coastguard scarcely ever passed 
that way. Ah ! to dip in the winds of space, after a plunge in 
the sea ! Who would not have launched forth into the future ? 
Why did I think? Why does a trouble invade us? Who 
knows ? Ideas drift across heart and brain by no will of 
yours. No courtesan is more capricious, more imperious, 
than an artist’s inspiration; you must seize her like fortune, 
and grasp her by the hair—when she comes. Borne aloft by 
my thought, like Astolpho upon his hippogriff, I rode across 
my world, and arranged it all to my liking. Then when I 
was fain to find some augury in the things about me for these 
daring castles that a wild imagination bade me build, I heard 
a sweet cry above the murmur of the restless sea-fringe that 
marks the ebb and flow of the tide upon the shore, the sound 
of a woman’s voice calling to me through the loneliness and 
silence, the glad cry of a woman fresh from the sea. It was 
as if a soul leaped forth in that cry, and it seemed to me as if 
I had seen the footprints of an angel on the bare rocks, an 
angel with outspread wings, who cried, “ You will succeed ! ” 

I came down, radiant and light of foot, by bounds, like a 
pebble flung down some steep slope. “What is it?” she 
asked as soon as she saw me, and I did not answer ; my eyes 
were full of tears. 

Yesterday Pauline had felt my sorrow, as to-day she felt my 
joy, with the magical responsiveness of a harp that is sensitive 
to every change in the atmosphere. Life has exquisite mo¬ 
ments. AVe went in silence along the beach. The sky was 
cloudless; there was not a ripple on the sea; others might 
have seen nothing there.but two vast blue steppes above and 
below; but as for us, who had no need of words to understand 



A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


361 


each other, who could conjure up illusions to feast the eyes 
of youth and fill the space between the zones of sea and sky— 
those swaddling-bands of the Infinite—we pressed each other’s 
hands at the slightest change that passed over the fields of 
water or the fields of air, for in those fleeting signs we read 
the interpretation of our double thought. Who has not 
known, in the midst of pleasure, the moment of infinite joy 
when the soul slips its fetters of flesh, as it were, and returns 
to the world whence it came? And pleasure is not our only 
guide to those regions ; are there not hours when feeling and 
thought intertwine with thought and feeling, and fare forth 
together as two children who take each other by the hand and 
run, without knowing why? We went thus. 

The roofs of the town had come to be a faint gray line on 
the horizon by the time that we came upon a poor fisherman 
on his way back to Croisic. He was barefooted ; his trousers, 
of linen cloth, were botched, and tattered, and fringed with 
rags; he wore a shirt of sailcloth, and a mere rag of a jacket. 
This wretchedness jarred upon us, as if it had been a discord¬ 
ant note in the midst of our harmony. We both looked at 
each other, regretting that we had not Abul Kasim’s treasury 
to draw upon at that moment. The fisherman was swinging 
a splendid lobster and an adder-pike on a string in his right 
hand, while in the left he carried his fishing tackle. We 
called to him, with a view to buying his fish. The same idea 
that occurred to us both found expression in a smile, to which 
I replied by a light pressure of the arm that lay in mine as I 
drew it closer to my heart. 

It was one of those nothings that memory afterwards weaves 
into poems, when by the fireside our thoughts turn to the hour 
when that nothing so moved us, and the place rises before us 
seen through a mirage which as yet has not been investigated, 
a magical illusion that often invests material things about us 
during those moments when life flows swiftly and our hearts 
are full. The most beautiful places are only what we make them. 


362 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


What man is there, with something of a poet in him, 
who does not find that some fragment of rock holds a larger 
place in his memories than famous views in many lands which 
he has made costly journeyings to see? Beside that rock 
what thoughts surged through him ! There he lived through 
a whole life ; there fears were dissipated, and gleams of hope 
shone into the depths of his soul. At that moment the sun, 
as if sympathizing with those thoughts of love or of the 
future, cast a glow of light and warmth over the tawny sides 
of the rock; his eyes were drawn to a mountain flower here 
and there on its sides, and the crannies and rifts grew larger 
in the silence and peace; the mass, so dark in reality, took 
the hue of his dreams; and then how beautiful it was with its 
scanty plant life, its pungent-scented camomile flowers, its 
velvet fronds of maiden-hair fern ! How splendidly decked 
for a prolonged festival of human powers exultant in their 
strength ! Once already the Lake of Bienne, seen from the 
island of Saint-Pierre, had so spoken to me; perhaps the rock 
at Croisic will be the last of these joys. But, then, what will 
become of Pauline ? 

‘‘You have had a fine catch this morning, good man,” I 
said to the fisherman. 

“Yes, sir,” he answered, coming to a stand; and we saw 
his face, swarthy with exposure to the sun’s rays that beat 
down on the surface of the sea. The expression of his face 
told of the patient resignation and the simple manners of 
fisher-folk. There was no roughness in the man’s voice; he 
had a kindly mouth, and there was an indefinable something 
about him—ambitionless, starved, and stunted. We should 
have been disappointed if he had looked otherwise. 

“ Where will you sell the fish? ” 

“ In the town.” 

“ What will they give you for the lobster?” 

“ Fifteen sous. ” 

“ And for the adder-pike ? ” 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


363 


‘‘Twenty sous.” 

“ Why does it cost so much more than the lobster?” 

“ Oh ! the adder-pike ” (he called it an ^//<?r-pike) is 
much more delicate, sir ! And then they are as spiteful as 
monkeys, and very hard to catch.” 

“Will you let us have them both for five francs?” asked 
Pauline. The man stood stock-still with astonishment. 

“ You shall not have them ! ” I cried, laughing. “ I bid ten 
francs for them. Emotions should be paid for at a proper 
rate.” 

“ Quite right,” returned she; “but I mean to have them. 
I bid ten francs two sous for them.” 

“Ten sous.” 

“ Twelve francs.” 

“ Fifteen francs.” 

“ Fifteen francs fifty centimes,” said she. 

“A hundred francs.” 

“ A hundred and fifty.” 

I bowed. We were not rich enough just then to bid against 
each other any longer. Our poor fisherman was mystified, 
not knowing whether to be annoyed or to give himself up to 
joy; but we helped him out of his difficulty by telling him 
where we lodged, and bidding him take the lobster and the 
adder-pike to our landlady. 

“Is that how you make a living?” I asked, wondering 
how he came to be so poor. 

“ It is about all I can do, and it is a very hard life,” he said. 
“ Shore fishing is a chancy trade when you have neither boat 
nor nets and must do it with hooks and tackle. You have 
to wait for the tide, you see, for the fish or the shell-fish, while 
those who do things on a large scale put out to sea. It is so 
hard to make a living at it that I am the only shore-fisher in 
these parts. For whole days together I get nothing at alL 
For if you are to catch anything, an adder-pike must fall 
asleep and get left by the tide, like this one here, or a lobster 


364 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


must be fool enough to stick to the rocks. Sometimes some 
bass come up with a high tide, and then I get hold of 
them.” 

“And, after all, taking one thing with another, what do 
you make each day ? ” 

“ Eleven or twelve sous. I could get on if I had no one 
but myself, but I have my father to keep, and the old man 
can’t help me; he is blind.” 

The words came from him quite simply; Pauline and I 
looked at each other in silence. 

“ Have you a wife or a sweetheart ? ” 

He glanced at us with one of the most piteous expressions 
that I have ever seen on a human face, and answered, “ If I 
had a wife, I should have to turn my old father adrift; I could 
not keep him and keep a wife and children too.” 

“But, my good fellow, why don’t you try to earn some¬ 
thing more by carrying salt in the haven or by working in 
the salt pits ? ” 

“Ah! sir, I could not stand the work for three months. 
I am not strong enough, and if anything happened to me 
my father would have to beg. The only kind of work 
for me is something that wants a little skill and a lot of 
patience.” 

“ But how can two people live on twelve sous a day ? ” 

“ Oh, sir, we live on buckwheat bannocks and the barnacles 
I break off the rocks.” 

“ How old are you ? ” 

“ Thirty-seven.” 

“ Have you always stopped here ? ” 

“ I once went to Guerande to bd drawn for the army, and 
once to Savenay to be examined by some gentlemen who 
measured me. If I had been an inch taller, they would have 
made me into a soldier. The first long march would have put 
an end to me, and my poor father would have been begging 
his bread this day.” 


A SEASIDE TEAGEDY. 


365 


I have imagined many tragedies, and Pauline, who passes 
her life by tlie side of a man who suffers as I do, is used to 
strong emotion, yet neither of us had ever heard words so 
touching as these of the fisherman. We walked on for sev¬ 
eral steps in silence, fathoming the dumb depths of this 
stranger’s life, admiring the nobleness of a sacrifice made 
unconsciously ; the strength of his weakness made us marvel, 
his reckless generosity humbled us. A vision of the life of 
this poor creature rose before me, a life of pure instinct, a 
being chained to his rock like a convict fettered to a cannon¬ 
ball, seeking for shell-fish to gain a livelihood, and upheld in 
that long patience of twenty years by a single feeling! 
How many hopes disappointed by a squall or a change in 
the weather! And while he was hanging over the edge of 
a block of granite with arms outstretched like a Hindoo 
fakir, his old father, crouching on his stool in the dark, 
silent hut, was waiting for the coarsest of the shell-fish, and 
bread, if the sea should please. 

Do you drink wine now and then ? ” I asked. 

‘‘Three or four times a year.” 

“ Very well, you shall drink wine to-day, you and your 
father ; and we will send you a white loaf.” 

“ You are very kind, sir.” 

“ We will give you the wherewithal for dinner, if you care 
to show us the way along the shore to Batz, where we shall 
see the tower that gives you a view of the harbor and the 
shore between Batz and Croisic.” 

“ With pleasure,” said he. “ Go straight on, follow the 
road you are in ; I will overtake you again when I have gotten 
rid of my tackle.” 

We both made the same sign of assent, and he rushed off 
towards the town in great spirits. We were still as we had 
been before, but the meeting had dimmed our joyousness. 

“Poor man ! ” Pauline exclaimed, in the tone that takes 
from a woman’s compassion any trace of the something that 


366 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


wounds us in pity, “it makes one ashamed to feel happy 
when he is so miserable, doesn’t it ? ” 

“There is nothing more bitter than helpless wishing,” I 
answered. “ The two poor creatures, this father and son, 
could no more understand how keen our sympathy has been 
than the world could understand the beauty in that life of 
theirs, for they are laying up treasures in heaven.” 

“ Poor country ! ” she said, pointing out to me the heaps 
of cow-dung spread along a field under a wall of unhewn 
stones. “I asked why they did that, and a peasant woman 
who was spreading it said that she was ^making firewood.’ 
Just imagine, dear, that when the cow-dung is dry, the poor 
people heap it up and light fires with it. During the winter 
they sell it, like blocks of bark fuel. And, finally, how much 
do you think the best-paid sempstresses earn ? Five sous a 
day and their board,” she went on after a pause. 

“Look,” I said, “the sea-winds blight or uproot every¬ 
thing ; there are no trees. Those who can afford it burn the 
driftwood and broken-up boats; it costs too dear, I expect, 
to bring firewood from other parts of Brittany where there is 
so much timber. It is a country without beauty, save for 
great souls, and those who have no hearts could not live here 
—it is a land for poets and barnacles, and nothing between. 
It was only when the salt warehouses were built on the cliff 
that people came to live here. There is nothing here but 
the sand, the sea beyond it, and above us—space.” 

We had already passed the town, and were crossing the 
waste between Croisic and the market-town of Batz. Imagine, 
dear uncle, two leagues of waste covered with gleaming sand. 
Here and there a few rocks raised their heads; you might 
almost think that extinct monsters were crouching among the 
dunes. The waves broke over the low ridges along the margin 
of the sea, till they looked like large white roses floating on 
the surface of the water and drifted up upon the beach. I 
looked across this savanna that lay between the ocean on the 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


367 


right and the great lagoon on the left, made by the encroach¬ 
ing sea between Croisic and the sandy heights of Gu^rande, 
with the barren salt marshes at their feet; then I looked at 
Pauline, and asked if she felt able to walk across the sands in 
the burning sun. 

‘‘I have laced boots on; let us go over there,” she said, 
looking towards the Tower of Batz, which caught the eye by 
its great mass, erected there like a pyramid in the desert, a 
slender spindle-shaped pyramid however, a pyramid so pic¬ 
turesquely ornate that one could imagine it to be an outlying 
sentinel ruin of some great Eastern town laid desolate. 

We went a few paces further to reach a fragment of rock to 
sit in the shade that it still cast, but it was eleven o’clock in 
the morning, and the shadows which crept closer and closer 
to our feet swiftly disappeared altogether. 

‘ ‘ How beautiful the silence is, ” she said; ‘^ and how the mur¬ 
mur of the sea beating steadily against the beach deepens it! ” 

“If you surrender your mind to the three immensities 
around us—the air, the sea, and the sands”—I answered, 
“and heed nothing but the monotonous sound of the ebb and 
flow, you would find its speech intolerable, for you would 
think that it bore the burden of a thought that would over¬ 
whelm you. Yesterday, at sunset, I felt that sensation; it 
crushed me.” 

“Oh yes, let us talk,” she said, after a long pause. “ No 
speaker is more terrible. I imagine that I am discovering the 
causes of the harmonies about us,” she went on. “This 
landscape that has but three contrasting colors—the gleam¬ 
ing yellow of the sand, the blue heavens, and the changeless 
green of the sea—is great without anything savage in its 
grandeur, vast but not desolate, monotonous but not dreary; 
it is made up of three elements; it has variety.” 

“Women alone can render their impressions like that,” I 
said; “ you would be the despair of a poet, dear soul, that I 
have read so well.” 


368 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


These three expressions of the Infinite glow like a burning 
flame in the noonday heat,” Pauline said, laughing. “Here 
I can imagine the poetry and passions of the East.” 

“And I, a vision of despair.” 

“Yes,” she said; “the dune is a sublime cloister.” 

We heard our guide hurrying after us; he wore his holiday 
clothes. We asked him a few insignificant questions; he 
thought he saw that our mood had changed, and, with the self¬ 
repression that misfortune teaches, he was silent; and we also 
—though from time to time each pressed the hand of the other to 
communicate thoughts and impressions—walked for half an hour 
in silence, either because the shimmering heat above the sands 
lay heavily upon us, or because the difficulty of walking ab¬ 
sorbed our attention. We walked hand in hand like two 
children; we should not have gone a dozen paces if we had 
walked arm in arm. 

The way that led to Batz was little more than a track; the 
first high wind effaced the ruts or the dints left by horses’ 
hoofs; but the experienced eyes of our guide discerned traces 
of cattle and sheep dung on this way, which sometimes wound 
towards the sea and sometimes towards the land, to avoid the 
cliffs on the one hand and the rocks on the other. It was 
noon, and we were only half-way. 

“ We will rest there,” I said, pointing to a headland where 
the rocks rose high enough to make it probable that we might 
find a cave among them. The fisherman, following the direc¬ 
tion of my finger, jerked his head. 

“ There is some one there !’ Any one coming from market 
at Batz to Croisic, or from Croisic to Batz, always goes round 
some way so as not to pass near the place.” 

He spoke in a low voice that suggested a mystery. 

“ Then is there a robber there, a murderer ? ” 

Our guide’s only answer was a deep breath that left us twice 
as curious as before. 

“ If we go past, will any harm come to us ? ” 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


369 


Oh, no ! ” 

“ Will you go with us ? ” 

No, sir ! ” 

“Then we shall go, if you will assure us that there is no 
danger for us.” 

“ I do not say that,” the fisherman answered quickly; “I 
only say that the one who is there will say nothing to you, 
and will do you no harm. Oh, good heavens ! he will not 
so much as stir from his place.” 

“ Then who is it ? ” 

“A man ! ” 

Never were two syllables uttered in such a tragical fashion. 

At that moment we were some twenty paces away from the 
ridge about which the sea was lapping. Our guide took the 
way that avoided the rocks, and we held straight on for them, 
but Pauline took my arm. Our guide quickened his pace so 
as to reach the spot where the two ways met again at the same 
time as ourselves. He thought, no doubt, that when we had 
seen “ the man,” we should hurry from the place. This 
kindled our curiosity; it became so strong that our hearts 
beat fast, as if a feeling of terror possessed us both. In spite 
of the heat of the day and a certain weariness after our walk 
over the sands, our souls were steeped in the ineffable languid 
calm of an ecstasy that possessed us both, brimming with pure 
joy, that can only be compared with the delight of hearing 
exquisite music—music like the Andianio mio ben of Mozart. 
When two souls are blended in one pure thought, are they 
not like two sweet voices singing together ? Before you can 
appreciate the emotion that thrilled us both, you must like¬ 
wise share in the half-voluptuous mood in which the morn¬ 
ing’s experiences had steeped us. 

If you had watched for a while some daintily-colored wood- 
dove on a swaying branch, above a spring, you would utter a 
cry of distress if you saw a hawk pounce down, bury claws of 
steel in its heart, and bear it away with the murderous speed 
24 


870 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


with which powder wings a bullet. We had scarcely set foot 
in the space before the cavern, a sort of esplanade some hun¬ 
dred feet above the sea, protected from the surge by the steep 
rocks that sloped to the water’s edge, when we were conscious 
of an electric thrill, something like the shock of a sudden 
awakening by some noise in a silent night. Both of us had 
seen a man sitting there on a block of granite, and he had 
looked at us. 

That glance, from two bloodshot eyes, was like the flash of 
fire from a cannon, and his stoical immobility could only be 
compared to the changeless aspect of the granite slabs that lay 
about him. Slowly his eyes turned towards us; his body as 
rigid and motionless as if he had been turned to stone ; then 
after that glance, that made such a powerful impression upon 
our minds, his eyes turned to gaze steadily over the vast stretch 
of sea, in spite of the glare reflected from it, as the eagle, it is 
said, gazes at the sun without lowering his eyelids, nor did he 
look up again from the waves. 

Try to call up before you, dear uncle, some gnarled oak 
stump, with all its branches lately lopped away, rearing its 
head, like a strange apparition, by the side of a lonely road, 
and you will have a clear idea of this man that we saw. The 
form of an age-worn Hercules, the face of Olympian Jove 
bearing marks of the ravages of time, of a life of rough toil 
upon the sea, of sorrow within, of coarse food, and darkened 
as if blasted by lightning. I saw the muscles, like a frame¬ 
work of iron, standing out upon his hard shaggy hands, and 
all things else about him indicated a vigorous constitution. 
In a corner o’f the cavern I noticed a fairly large heap of moss, 
and on a rough slab of granite, that did duty as a table, a 
piece of a round loaf lay over the mouth of a stoneware pitcher. 

Never among my visions of the life led in the desert by 
early Christian anchorites had I pictured a face more awe¬ 
inspiring, more grand and terrible in repentance than this. 
And even you, dear uncle, in your experience of the confes- 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


371 


sional, have, perhaps, never seen a penitence so grand; for 
this remorse seemed to be drowned in a sea of prayers, of 
prayers that flowed for ever from a dumb despair. This fish¬ 
erman, this rough Breton sailor, was sublime through a thought 
hidden within him. Had those eyes shed tears? Had the 
hand of that rough-hewn statue ever struck a blow ? A fierce 
honesty was stamped upon a rugged forehead where force of 
character had still left some traces of the gentleness that is 
the prerogative of all true strength. Was that brow, so scored 
and furrowed with wrinkles, compatible with a great heart? 
How came this man to abide with the granite ? How had the 
granite entered into him ? Where did the granite end and the 
man begin? A whole crowd of thoughts passed through our 
minds; and, as our guide had expected, we went by quickly 
and in silence. When he saw us again, we were either per¬ 
turbed with a sense of dread or overcome by the strangeness 
of this thing, but he did not remind us that his prediction had 
come true. 

‘‘ Did you see him ? ” he asked. 

“ What is the man ? ” 

^^They call him the man under a vow.” 

You can readily imagine how we both turned to our fisher¬ 
man at these words. He was a simple-minded fellow; he un¬ 
derstood our mute inquiry; and this is the story which I have 
tried to tell, as far as possible, in the homely language in 
which he told it. 

“The Croisic folk and the people at Batz think that he has 
been guilty of something, madame, and that he is doing a 
penance laid upon him by a famous rector, to whom he went 
to confess, beyond Nantes. There are some who think that 
Cambremer (that is his name) is unlucky, and that it brings 
bad luck to pass through the air he breathes, so a good many 
of them before going round the rocks will stop to see which 
way the wind blows. If it blows from the nor’west,” he said, 
pointing in that direction with his finger, “ they would not 


372 


A SEASIDE TEAGEDY. 


go on if they had set out to seek a bit of the True Cross; 
they turn back again; they are afraid. Other folk, rich 
people in Croisic, say that Cambremer once made a vow, and 
that is why he is called ‘the man under a vow.’ He never 
leaves the place; he is there night and day. 

“There is some show of reason for these tales,” he added, 
turning round to point out to us something that had escaped 
our notice. “ You see that wooden cross that he has set up 
there on the left; that is to show that he has put himself 
under the protection of God and the Holy Virgin and the 
saints. He would not be respected as he is, if it were not 
that the terror people have of him makes him as safe as if he 
had a guard of soldiers. 

“ He has not said a word since he went into prison in the 
open air. He lives on bread and water that his brother’s 
little girl brings him every morning, a little slip of a thing 
twelve years old ; he has left all he has to her, and a pretty 
child she is, as gentle as a lamb, and full of fun, a dear little 
pet. She has blue eyes as long as that'' he went on, holding 
out his thumb, “and hair like a cherub’s. When you begin 
—‘I say, Perottc ’—(that is what we say for Pierrette," he said, 
interrupting himself; “Saint Pierre is her patron saint, Cam¬ 
bremer’s name is Pierre and he was her godfather)—‘ I say, 
Perotte, what does your uncle say to you ? ’—‘ He says noth¬ 
ing,’says she, ‘nothing whatever, nothing at all.’—‘Well, 
then, what does he do when you go?’—‘He kisses me on 
the forehead of a Sunday.’Aren’t you afraid of him?’ 
—‘Not a bit,’ says she; ‘he is my godfather.’—He will 
not have any one else bring his food. Perotte says that 
he smiles when she comes; but you might as well say that the 
sun shone in a fog, for he is as gloomy as a sea-mist, they 
say.” 

“But you are exciting our curiosity without satisfying it,” 
I broke in. “Do you know what brought him there? Was 
it trouble, or remorse, or crime, or is he mad, or what ? ” 


A SEASIDE TEAGEDY. 


373 


‘‘Eh ! sir, there is hardly a soul save my father and me 
that knows the rights of the matter. My mother that’s gone 
was in service in the house of the justice that Cambremer 
went to. The priest told him to go to a justice, and only 
gave him absolution on that condition, if the tale is true that 
they tell in the haven. My poor mother overheard Cam¬ 
bremer without meaning to do so, because the kitchen was 
alongside the sitting-room in the justice’s house. So she 
heard. She is dead, and the justice has gone too. My mother 
made us promise, my father and me, never to let on to the 
people round about; and I can tell you this, every hair 
bristled up on my head that night when my mother told us the 
story-” 

“ Well, then, tell it to us ; we will not repeat it.” 

The fisherman looked at us both—then he went on, some¬ 
thing after this fashion— 

“ Pierre Cambremer, whom you saw yonder, is the oldest 
of the family. The Cambremers have been seamen from 
father to son ; you see, their name means that the sea has 
always bent under them. The one you saw had a fishing- 
boat, several fishing-boats, and the sardine-fishery was his 
trade, though he did deep-sea fishing as well for the dealers. 
He would have fitted out a bigger vessel, and gone to the 
cod-fishing, if he had not been so fond of his wife; a fine 
woman she was, a Brouin from Guerande, a strapping girl 
with a warm heart. She was so fond of Cambremer that she 
would never let her man go away from her for longer than for 
the sardine-fishing. They lived down yonder, there! ” said 
our fisherman, standing on a hillock to point out to us an 
islet in the little inland sea between the dunes where we were 
walking and the salt marshes at Guerande. “ Do you see the 
house? It belonged to him. 

“ Jacquette Brouin and Cambremer had but one child, a 
boy, whom they loved like—what shall I say?—like an only 
child; they were crazy over him. Their little Jacques might 



374 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


have done something (asking your pardon) into the soup, and 
they would have thought it sweetened it. Times and times 
again we used to sec them buying the finest toys at the fair 
for him! There was no sense in it—everybody told them so. 
Little Cambremer found out that he could do as he liked with 
them, and he grew as willful as a red donkey. If any one 
told his father, ‘Your boy has all but killed little So-and-so,’ 
Cambremer used to laugh and say, ‘ Bah ! he will be a meddle¬ 
some sailor ! He will command the king’s ships.’ Another 
would say, ‘ Pierre Cambremer, do you know that your lad 
put out Pougaud’s little girl’s eye?’ ‘ He will be one for 
the girls,’ Pierre would say. It was all right in his eyes. By 
the time the little rascal was ten years old he knocked every¬ 
body about, and twisted the fowls’ necks for fun, and ripped 
open the pigs; he was as bloodthirsty as a weasel. ‘He will 
make a famous soldier! ’ said Cambremer; ‘ he has a liking 
for bloodshed.’ 

“You see, I myself remember all this,” said our fisherman; 
“and so does Cambremer,” he added, after a pause. 

“Jacques Cambremer grew up to be fifteen or sixteen and 
he was—well, a bully. He would go off and amuse himself 
at Guerande, and cut a figure at Savenay. Pie must have 
money for that. So he began robbing his mother, and she 
did not dare to tell her husband. Cambremer was so honest 
that if any one had overpaid him twopence on an account, he 
would have gone twenty leagues to pay it back. At last one 
day the mother had nothing left. While the father was away 
at the fishing, Jacques made off with the dresser, the plenish¬ 
ing, and the sheets and the linen, and left nothing but the 
four walls; he had sold all the things in the house to pay for 
his carryings-on at Nantes. The poor woman cried about it 
day and night. She would have to tell his father when he 
came back, and she was afraid of the father; not for herself 
though, not she ! So when Pierre Cambremer came back and 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


375 


saw his house furnished with things the neighbors had loaned 
her, he asked— 

“ ‘ What does this mean ? ’ 

*‘And the poor thing, more dead than alive, answered, 
* We have been robbed.’ 

< What has become of Jacques ? ’ 

“ ‘ Jacques is away on a spree ! ’ 

“ Nobody knew where the rogue had gone. 

< He is too fond of his fun,’ said Pierre. 

“ Six months afterwards the poor father heard that Jacques 
had gotten into trouble at Nantes. He goes over on foot— 
it is quicker than going by sea—puts his hand on his son’s 
shoulder, and fetches him home. He did not ask him, 
‘ What have you been doing ? ’ 

^ If you don’t keep steady here for a couple of years with 
your mother and me,’ he said, ^ and help with the fishing, 
and behave yourself like a decent fellow, you will have me to 
reckon with ! ’ 

“ The harebrained youngster, counting on the weakness his 
father and mother had for him, made a grimace at his father, 
and thereupon Pierre fetched him a slap in the face that laid 
up Jacques for six months afterwards. 

The poor mother was breaking her heart all the time. 
One night she was lying quietly asleep by her husband’s side, 
when she heard a noise and sat up, and got a stab in the arm 
from a knife. She shrieked; and when they had struck a 
light, Pierre Cambremer found that his wife was wounded. 
He thought it was a robber, as if there were any robbers in 
our part of the world, when you can carry ten thousand francs 
in gold from Croisic to Saint Nazaire, and no one would so 
much as ask you what you had under your arm. Pierre looked 
about for Jacques, and could not find him anywhere. In the 
morning the unnatural wretch had the face to come back and 
say that he had been at Batz. 

I should tell you that the mother did not know where to 


376 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


hide her money. Cambremer himself used to leave his with 
M. Dupotet at Croisic. Their son’s wild ways had eaten up 
crowns and francs and gold louis; they were ruined, as you 
may say, and it was hard on folk who had about twelve thou¬ 
sand livres, including their little island. Nobody knew how 
much Cambremer had paid down at Nantes to have his son 
back. Their luck went from bad to worse. One of Cam- 
bremer’s brothers was unfortunate, and wanted help. Pierre 
told him, to comfort him, that Jacques and Perotte (the 
younger brother’s girl) should be married some day. Then, 
to put him in the way of earning his bread, he took him to 
help in the fishing; for Joseph Cambremer was obliged to 
work with his own hands. His wife had died of the fever, 
and he had to pay some one else to nurse Perotte till she was 
weaned. Pierre Cambremer’s wife owed as much as a hundred 
francs to different people on the baby’s account for linen and 
things, and two or three months to big Frelu, who had a child 
by Simon Gaudry, and nursed Perotte. La Cambremer, too, 
had sewn a Spanish doubloon into the flock of her mattress, 
and written on it, ‘For Perotte.’ You see, she had had a 
good education, and could write like a clerk; she had taught 
her son to read too—that was the ruin of him. 

“ Nobody knew how it came about, but that scoundrel 
Jacques got wind of the gold and took it, and went off to get 
drunk at Croisic. Old Cambremer, just as if it had happened 
on purpose, came in with his boat; and as he came up to the 
house he saw a scrap of paper floating about. He picked it 
up and took it in to his wife; and she dropped down, for she 
knew her own handwriting. Cambremer said not a word. 
He went over to Croisic, and heard there that his son was in 
the billiard-room. Then he sent for the good woman who 
kept the cafe, and said to her— 

“ ‘ I told Jacques not to change a piece of gold that he will 
pay his score with: let me have it; I will wait at the door, 
and you shall have silver for it,* 


A SEASIDE 7RAGED Y. 


377 


“ The woman of the house brought him out the gold-piece. 
Cambremer took it. 

' Good ! ’ said he, and he went away home. 

‘‘All the town knew that. But this I know, and the rest 
of them have only a sort of general guess at how it was. He 
told his wife to set their room to rights; it is on the ground 
floor. He kindled a fire on the hearth, he lighted two candles, 
and put two chairs on one side of the fireplace, and a three- 
legged stool on the other. Then he bade his wife put out the 
suit he was married in, and to put on her wedding-gown. He 
dressed himself; and then when he was dressed, he went out 
for his brother, and told him to keep watch outside the house, 
and give warning if he heard any sound on either beach, here 
by the sea or yonder on the salt marshes at Guerande. When 
he thought his wife must be dressed, he went in again; he 
loaded a gun and hid it in the chimney-corner. 

“Back comes Jacques to the house. It was late when he 
came ; he had been drinking and gambling up to ten o’clock; 
he had got some one to ferry him over at Carnouf point. His 
uncle heard him hail the boat, and went to look for him along 
the side of the salt marshes, and passed him without saying 
anything. 

“ When Jacques came in, his father spoke : 

“ ‘ Sit you down there,’ he said, pointing to the stool. ‘ You 
are before your father and mother; you have sinned against 
them, and they are your judges.’ 

“ Jacques began to bellow, for Cambremer’s face twitched 
strangely. The mother sat there, stiff as an oar. 

“ ‘ If you make any noise, if you stir, if you don’t sit straight 
up like a mast on your stool,’ said Pierre, pointing his gun at 
him, ‘ I will shoot you like a dog.’ 

“ Cambremer’s son grew mute as a fish, and all this time 
the mother said not a word. 

“ ‘ Here is a bit of paper that wrapped up a Spanish gold coin. 
That coin was in your mother’s mattress. No one knew 


N 


378 


A SEASIBE TRAGEDY. 


where it was except your mother. I found the bit of paper 
floating on the water when I came in. Only this evening you 
changed the piece of Spanish gold at Mother Fleurant’s, and 
your mother cannot find the coin in her mattress. Explain 
yourself.’ 

“ Jacques said that he had not taken his mother’s money, 
and that he had had the coin at Nantes. 

‘‘ ‘ So much the better,’ said Pierre. ‘ How can you prove 
it?’ 

‘ I did have it.’ 

“ ^ You did not take your mother’s coin ? ’ 

“ ‘No.’ 

“ ‘ Can you swear it on your salvation ? ’ 

“ He was just going to swear, when his mother looked up 
and said— 

“ ‘Jacques, my child, take care; do not swear if it is not 
true. You can repent and mend ; there is still time,’ and she 
cried at that. 

“ ‘ You are a So-and-so,’ said he; ‘ you have always tried to 
ruin me.’ 

“ Cambremer turned white, and said, ‘ What you have just 
said to your mother goes to swell your account. Now, come 
to the point! Will you swear? ’ 

“ ‘ Yes.’ 

^‘‘Stop a bit,’ said Pierre, ‘was there a cross on your 
coin like the mark the sardine merchant put on the coin he 
paid me? ’ 

“Jacques grew sober at that, and began to cry. 

“ ‘ That is enough talk,’ said Pierre. ‘ I say nothing of 
what you have done before—I had no mind that a Cambremer 
should die in the market-place at Croisic. Say your prayeis, 
and let us be quick ! A priest is coming to hear your confes¬ 
sion.’ 

“ The mother had gone out of the room that she might not 
hear her son’s doom. As soon as she went out, Joseph Cam- 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


379 


bremer, the uncle, came in with the rector from Piriac. To 
him Jacques would not open his mouth. He was shrewd; he 
knew his father well enough to feel sure that he would not kill 
him till he had confessed. 

“‘Thanks. Pardon us, sir,’ Cambremer said to the 
priest when Jacques continued obstinate. ‘ I meant to give 
my son a lesson, and I beg you to say nothing about it. As 
for you,’ he went on, turning to Jacques, ‘if you do not 
mend your ways, next time you go wrong shall be the last, 
and shrift or no shrift, I will make an end of it.’ 

“ He sent him off to bed. The young fellow believed him, 
and fancied that he could make things right with his father. 
He slept. His father sat up. When he saw his son fast 
asleep, he covered the young fellow’s mouth with hemp, bound 
it tightly round with a strip of sailcloth; then he tied him 
hand and foot. He writhed, he ‘shed tears of blood,’ so 
Cambremer told the justice. What would you have! His 
mother flung herself at the father’s feet. 

“ ‘ He is doomed,’ said Cambremer; ‘ you will help me to 
put him into the boat.’ 

“She would not help him, and Cambremer did it alone; 
he fastened him down in the bottom of the boat, and tied a 
stone round his neck, put out of the bay, reached the sea, and 
came out as far as the rock where he sits now. Then the 
poor mother, who had made her brother-in-law take her over, 
cried out in vain for mercy ; it was like throwing a stone at a 
wolf. By the moonlight she saw the father take the son, 
towards whom her heart still yearned, and fling him into the 
water; and as there was not a breath of air stirring, she heard 
the gurgling sound, and then nothing —not an eddy, not a 
ripple; the sea is a famous keeper of secrets, that it is! 
When Cambremer reached the place to silence her moans, he 
found her lying like one dead. The two brothers could not 
carry her, so they had to put her in the boat that had carried 


380 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY, 


her son, and they took her round home by way of the Croisic 
channel. 

“Ah, well! la belle Brouin, as they called her, did not 
live the week out. She died, asking her husband to burn the 
accursed boat. Oh I he did it; yes, he did it. He himself 
was queer after that; he did not know what ailed him; he 
reeled about like a man who cannot carry his wine. Then he 
went off somewhere for ten days, and came back again to put 
himself where you saw him; and since he has been there, he 
has not said a word.” 

The fisherman told us the story in a few minutes, in words 
even more simple than those that I have used. Working 
people make little comment on what they tell; they give you 
the facts that strike them, and interpret them by their own 
feelings. His language was as keenly incisive as the stroke 
of a hatchet. 

“I shall not go to Batz,” said Pauline, when we reached 
the outer rim of the lake. 

We went back to Croisic by way of the salt marshes, the 
fisherman guiding us through the labyrinth. He had also 
grown silent. Our mood had changed. Both of us were 
deep in melancholy musings, and saddened by the mournful 
story which explained the swift presentiment that we had felt at 
the sight of Cambremer. We had each of us sufficient knowl¬ 
edge of human nature to fill m the outlines of the three lives 
that our guide had sketched for us. The tragedy of these 
three human beings rose up before us as if we saw scene after 
scene of a drama crowned by the father’s expiation of an in¬ 
evitable crime. We did not dare to look at the rocks where 
he sat, the fate-bound soul who struck terror into a whole 
country-side. A few clouds overcast the sky. The mist rose 
on the horizon of the sea. We were walking through the 
most acrid dreariness that I have ever seen ; the earth beneath 
our feet seemed sick and unwholesome in these salt marshes. 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


381 


which, with good reason, might be called a cutaneous erup¬ 
tion on the face of the earth. The ground is scored over in 
rough squares, with high banks of gray earth about them ; 
each is full of brackish water; the salt rises to the surface, 
'fhese artificial hollows are intersected by raised pathways, on 
which the workmen stand to skim the surface of the pools 
with long scrapers; and the salt, when collected, is deposited 
to drain on circular platforms set at even distances, till it is fit 
to lay up in heaps. For two hours we skirted this dreary 
chessboard, where the salt stops the growth of any green 
thing; occasionally, at long intervals, we came upon one or 
two paludiers, so they call the men who work among the salt 
marshes. These workers, or it should rather be said, this 
race apart among the Bretons, wear a special costume, a 
white jacket rather like those that brewers wear. They marry 
only among themselves ; a girl belonging to this tribe has 
never been known to marry any one but a paludier. The 
hideous desolation of those swamps where the boggy soil is 
scraped up into symmetrical heaps, the grayness of the soil, 
from which every Breton flower shrinks in disgust, were in 
keeping with the sadness within us. We reached the spot 
where you cross an arm of the sea, the channel doubtless 
through which the salt-water breaks in upon the low-lying 
land and leaves its deposits on the soil, and we were glad to 
see the scanty plant-life growing along the edge of the sand. 
As we crossed it, we saw the island in the lagoon where the 
Cambremers once lived, and turned our heads away. 

When we reached our inn we noticed a billiard-table in the 
room on the ground floor, and when we learned that it was 
the only public billiard-table in Croisic, we made our prepara¬ 
tions for departure that night, and on the morrow we went to 
Gu^rande. 

Pauline was still depressed, and I myself felt a return of the 
burning sensation that scorches my brain. I was so griev¬ 
ously haunted by the visions of those three lives that I had 


SS2 


A SEASIDE TRAGEDY. 


conjured up, that Pauline said, Write the story, Louis, and 
the fever may take a turn.” 

So, dear uncle, I have written the story for you; but our 
adventure has already undone the good effects of repose, the 
result of our stay here and at the Baths. 

Paris, November 20, 1834. 



V 



THE COUNTRY PARSON 
ALBERT SAVARON 






PREFACE. 


Perhaps in no instance of Balzac’s work is his singular 
fancy for pulling that work about more remarkably instanced 
and illustrated than in the case of “ The Country Parson.” 
The double date, 1837-1845, which the author attached to it, 
in his usual conscientious manner, to indicate these revisions, 
has a greater signification than almost anywhere else. When 
the book, or rather its constituent parts, first appeared in the 
Fresse for 1839, having been written the winter before, not 
only was it very different in detail, but the order of the parts 
was altogether dissimilar. Balzac here carried out his favorite 
plan—a plan followed by many other authors no doubt, but 
always, as it seems to me, of questionable wisdom—that of 
beginning in the middle and then “throwing back” with a 
long retrospective and explanatory digression. 

In this version the story of Tascheron’s crime and its pun¬ 
ishment came first; and it was not till after the execution 
that the early history of Vdronique (who gave her name to 
this part as to a “ Suite du Cure de Village ”) was introduced. 
This history ceased at the crisis of her life ; and when it was 
taken up in a third part, called “ Veronique au Tombeau,” only 
the present conclusion of the book, with her confession, was 
given. The long account of her sojourn at Montegnac, of her 
labors there, of the episode of Farrabesche, and so forth, did 
not appear till 1841, when the whole book, with the in¬ 
versions and insertions just indicated, appeared in such a 
changed form that even the indefatigable M. de Lovenjoul 
dismisses as “impossible” the idea of exhibiting a complete 
picture of the various changes made. Nor was the author 
even yet contented; for in 1845, before establishing it in its 

(ix) 


X 


PREFACE. 


place in the ** Comidie,” he not only, as was his wont, took out 
the chapter-headings, leaving five divisions only, but intro¬ 
duced other alterations, resulting in the present condition of 
the book. 

As the book stands it may be said to consist of three parts 
united rather by identity of the personages who act in them 
than by exact dramatic connection. There is, to take the 
title-part first (though it is by no means the most really impor¬ 
tant or pervading) the picture of “The Country Parson,” 
which is almost an exact, and beyond doubt a designed, pen¬ 
dant to that of “The Country Doctor.” The Abbe Bonnet 
indeed is not able to carry out economic ameliorations, as 
Dr. Benassis is, personally, but by inducing V^ronique to do 
so he brings about the same result, and on an even larger 
scale. His personal action (with the necessary changes for 
his profession) is also tolerably identical, and on the whole 
the two portraits may fairly be hung together as Balzac’s ideal 
representations of the good man in soul-curing and body-cur¬ 
ing respectively. Both are largely conditioned by his eigh¬ 
teenth century fancy for “playing Providence,” and by his 
delight in extensive financial-commercial schemes. But the 
beauty of the portraiture of the “ Cur6 ” is nearly, if not quite 
equal, to that of the doctor, though the institution of celibacy 
has prevented Balzac from giving a key to the conduct of 
Bonnet quite as sufficient as that which he furnished for the 
conduct of Benassis. 

The second part of the book is the crime—episodic as re¬ 
gards the criminal, cardinal as regards other points—of Tas- 
cheron. Balzac was very fond of “his crimes;” and it is 
quite worth while in connection with his handling of the mur¬ 
der here to study the curious story of his actual interference 
in the famous Peytel case, which also interested Thackeray so 
much in his Paris days. The Tascheron case itself (which 
from a note appears to have been partly suggested by some 
actual affair) no doubt has interests for those who like such 


PREFACE. 


xi 


things, and the picture of the criminal in prison is very strik¬ 
ing. But we sec and know so very little of Tascheron him¬ 
self, and even to the very last (which is long afterwards) we 
are left so much in the dark as to his love for Veronique, 
that the thing has an extraneous air. It is like a short story 
foisted in. 

This objection connects itself at once with a similar one to 
the delineation of Veronique. There is nothing in her con¬ 
duct intrinsically impossible, or even improbable. A girl of 
her temperament, at once, as often happens, strongly sensual 
and strongly devotional, deprived of her good looks by illness, 
thrown into the arms of a husband physically repulsive, and 
after a short time not troubling himself to be amiable in any 
other way, might very well take refuge in the substantial, if 
not ennobling, consolations offered by a good-looking and 
amiable young fellow of the lower class. Her conduct at the 
time of the crime (her exact complicity in which is, as we 
have said, rather imperfectly indicated) is also fairly prob¬ 
able, and to her repentance and amendment of life no excep¬ 
tion can be taken. But only in this last stage do we really 
see anything of the inside of Veronique’s nature; and even 
then we do not see it completely. The author’s silence on 
the details of the actual liaison with Tascheron has its advan¬ 
tages, but it also has its defects. 

Still, the book is one of great attraction and interest, and 
takes, if I may judge by my own experience, a high rank for 
enchaining power among that class of Balzac’s books which 
cannot be put exactly highest. If the changes made in it by 
its author have to some extent dislocated it as a whole, they 
have resulted in very high excellence for almost all the parts. 

As something has necessarily been said already about the 
book-history of the Country Parson,” little remains but to 
give exact dates and places of appearance. The Presse pub¬ 
lished the (original) first part in December-January, 1838-39, 
the original second (“ Veronique ”) six months later, and the 


r 


xii PJ^EFACE. 

third (“Veronique au Tombeau”) in August. All had 
chapters and chapter-titles. As a book it was in its first com¬ 
plete form published by Souverain in 1841, and was again 
altered when it took rank in the “ Comedie ” six years later. 

‘‘Albert Savaron,” with its enshrined story of “ L’Ambi- 
tieuxpar Amour” (something of an oddity for Balzac, who 
often puts a story within a story, but less formally than this) 
contains various appeals, and shows not a few of its author’s 
well-known interests in politics, in affairs, in new^spapers, not 
to mention the enumerations of dots and fortunes which he 
never could refuse himself. The affection of Savaron for the 
Duchesse d’Argaiolo may interest different persons differently. 
It seems to me a little fade. But the character of Rosalie de 
Watteville is in a very different rank. Here only, except, 
perhaps, in the case of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whose un¬ 
lucky experiences had emancipated her, has Balzac depicted 
a girl full of character, individuality, and life. It was appar¬ 
ently necessary that Rosalie should be made not wholly amiable 
in order to obtain this accession of wits and force, and to be 
freed from the fatal gift of candeur^ the curse of the French 
ingenue. Her creator has also thought proper to punish her 
further, and cruelly, at the end of the book. Nevertheless, 
though her story may be less interesting than either of theirs, 
it is impossible not to put her in a much higher rank as a 
heroine than either Eugenie or Ursule, and not to wish that 
Balzac had included the conception of her in a more impor¬ 
tant structure of fiction. 

Albert Savaron appeared in sixty headed chapters in the 
Steele for May and June, 1842, and then assumed its place in 
the “Comedie.” But though left there, it also formed part 
of a two-volume issue by Souverain in 1844, i^J company with 
“La Muse du Department.” “ Rosalie ” was at first named 
“ Philomdne.” 


G. S. 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 

(Z<f Cure de Village.') 


I. 

VERONIQUE. 

At the lower end of Limoges, at the corner of the Ane de 
la Vieille-Poste and the Rue de la Cite, there stood, some 
thirty years back, an old-fashioned shop of the kind that 
seems to have changed in nothing since the middle ages. The 
great stone paving-slabs, riven with countless cracks, were laid 
upon the earth; the damp oozed up through them here and 
there; while the heights and hollows of this primitive floor¬ 
ing would have tripped up those who were not careful to 
observe them. Through the dust on the walls it was possible 
to discern a sort of mosaic of timber and bricks, iron and 
stone, a heterogeneous mass which owed its compact solidity 
to time, and perhaps to chance. For more than two centu¬ 
ries the huge rafters of the ceiling had bent without break¬ 
ing beneath the weight of the upper stories, which were 
constructed of wooden framework, protected from the weather 
by slates arranged in a geometrical pattern ; altogether, it was 
a quaint example of a burgess’ house in olden times. Once 
there had been carved figures on the wooden window-frames, 
but sun and rain had destroyed the ornaments, and the windows 
themselves stood all awry; some bent outwards, some bent in, 
yet others were minded to part company, and one and all 
carried a little soil deposited (it would be hard to say how) 
in crannies hollowed by the rain, where a few shy creeping 
plants and thin weeds grew to break into meagre blossom 

*( 1 ) 


2 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


in the spring. Velvet mosses covered the roof and the 
window-sills. 

The pillar which supported the corner of the house, built 
though it was of composite masonry, that is to say, partly 
of stone, partly of brick and flints, was alarming to behold 
by reason of its curvature; it looked as though it must give 
way some day beneath the weight of the superstructure whose 
gable projected fully six inches. For which reason the local 
authorities and the board of works bought the house and 
pulled it down to widen the street. The venerable corner 
pillar had its charms for lovers of old Limoges; it carried a 
pretty sculptured shrine and a mutilated image of the Virgin, 
broken during the Revolution. Citizens of an archaeological 
turn could discover traces of the stone sill meant to hold 
candlesticks and to receive wax-tapers and flowers and votive 
offerings of the pious. 

Within the shop a wooden staircase at the further end gave 
access to the two floors above and to the attics in the roof. The 
house itself, packed in between two neighboring dwellings, 
had little depth from back to front, and no light save from the 
windows which gave upon the street, the two rooms on each 
floor having a window apiece, one looking out into the Rue 
de la Vieille-Poste and the other into the Rue de la Cite. In 
the middle ages no artisan was better housed. The old corner 
shop must surely have belonged to some armorer or cutler, 
or master of some craft which could be carried on in the 
open air, for it was impossible for its inmates to see until 
the heavily-ironed shutters were taken down and air as well 
as light freely admitted. ' There were two doors (as is usually 
the case where a shop faces into two streets), one on either 
side the pillar. But for the interruption of the white thres¬ 
hold stones, hollowed by the wear of centuries, the whole shop 
front consisted of a low wall which rose to elbow height,^ 
Along the top of this wall a groove had been contrived, and a 
similar groove ran the length of the beam above, which sup- 




v^:ronique. 


3 


ported the weight of the house wall. Into these grooves slid 
the heavy shutters, secured by huge iron bolts and bars ; and 
when the doorways had been made fast in like manner, the 
artisan’s workshop was as good as a fortress. 

For the first twenty years of this present century the Lim- 
ousins had been accustomed to see the interior filled up with 
old iron and brass, cart-springs, tires, bells, and every sort of 
metal from the demolition of houses; but the curious in the 
debris of the old town discovered, on a closer inspection, the 
traces of a forge in the place and a long streak of soot, signs 
which confirmed the guesses of archaeologists as to the original 
purpose of the dwelling. On the second floor there was a liv¬ 
ing room and a kitchen, two more rooms on the third, and an 
attic in the roof, which was used as a warehouse for goods 
more fragile than the hardware tumbled down pell-mell in the 
shop. 

The house had been first let and then sold to one Sauviat, 
a hawker, who from 1792 till 1796 traveled in Auvergne for a 
distance of fifty leagues round, bartering pots, plates, dishes, 
and glasses, all the gear, in fact, needed by the poorest cot¬ 
tagers, for old iron, brass, lead, and metal of every sort and 
description. The Auvergnat would give a brown earthen pip¬ 
kin worth a couple of sous for a pound weight of lead or a 
couple of pounds of iron, a broken spade or hoe, or an old 
cracked saucepan ; and was always judge in his own cause, 
and gave his own weights. In three years’ time Sauviat took 
another trade in addition, and became a tinman. 

In 1793 he was able to buy a chateau put up for sale by the 
nation. This he pulled down ; and doubtless repeated a pro¬ 
fitable experiment at more than one point in his sphere of 
operations. After a while these first essays of his gave him 
an idea; he suggested a piece of business on a large scale to 
a fellow-countryman in Paris ; and so it befell that the Black 
Band, so notorious for the havoc which it wrought among old 
buildings, was a sprout of old Sauviat s brain, the invention 


4 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


of the hawker whom all Limoges had seen for seven-and- 
twenty years in his tumble-down shop among his broken bells, 
flails, chains, brackets, twisted leaden gutters, and heteroge¬ 
neous old iron. In justice to Sauviat, it should be said that 
he never knew how large and how notorious the association 
became; he only profited by it to the extent of the capital 
which he invested with the famous firm of Brezac. 

At last the Auvergnat grew tired of roaming from fair to 
fair and place to place, and settled down in Limoges, where, 
in 1797, he had married a wife, the motherless daughter of a 
tinman, Champagnac by name. When the father-in-law died, 
he bought the house in which he had, in a manner, localized 
his trade in old iron, though for some three years after his 
marriage he had still made his rounds, his wife accompanying 
him. Sauviat had completed his fiftieth year when he married 
old Champagnac’s daughter, and the bride herself was cer¬ 
tainly thirty years old at the least. Champagnac’s girl was 
neither pretty nor blooming. She was born in Auvergne, 
and the dialect was a mutual attraction ; she was, moreover, 
of the heavy build which enables a woman* to stand the 
roughest work ; so she went with Sauviat on his rounds, car¬ 
ried loads of lead and iron on her back, and drove the sorry 
carrier’s van full of the pottery on which her husband made 
usurious profits, little as his customers imagined it. La Cham¬ 
pagnac was sunburned and high-colored. She enjoyed rude 
health, exhibiting when she laughed a row of teeth large and 
white as blanched almonds, and, as to physique, possessed the 
bust and hips of a woman destined by nature to be a mother. 
Her prolonged spinsterhood was entirely due to her father; 
he had not read Moliere, but he raised Harpagon’s cry of 
“Without portion!” scaring suitors. The Sans do/’’ did 
not frighten Sauviat away*; he was not averse to receiving the 
bride without a portion ; in the first place, a would-be bride¬ 
groom of fifty ought not to raise difficulties; and, in the sec¬ 
ond, his wife saved him the expense of a servant. He added 


V&RONIQUE. 


5 


nothing to the furniture of his room. On his wedding-day it 
contained a four-post bedstead hung with green serge curtains 
and a valance with a scalloped edge ; a dresser, a chest of 
drawers, four easy-chairs, a table, and a looking-glass, all 
bought at different times and from different places ; and till 
he left the old house for good, the list remained the same. 
On the upper shelves of the dresser stood sundry pewter plates 
and dishes, no two of them alike. After this description of 
the bedroom, the kitchen may be left to the reader’s imagina¬ 
tion. 

Neither husband nor wife could read, a slight defect of 
education which did not prevent them from reckoning money 
to admiration, nor from carrying on one of the most pros- 
perous of all trades, for Sauviat never bought anything unless 
he felt sure of making a hundred per cent, on the transaction, 
and dispensed with bookkeeping and counting-house by carry¬ 
ing on a ready-money business. He possessed, moreover, a 
faculty of memory so perfect that an article might remain for 
five years in his shop, and at the end of the time both he and 
his wife could recollect the price they gave for it to a farthing, 
together with the added interest for every year since the out¬ 
lay. 

Sauviat’s wife, when she was not busy about the house, 
always sat on a rickety wooden chair in her shop-door beside 
the pillar, knitting, and watching the passers-by, keeping an 
eye on the old iron, and selling, weighing, and delivering it 
herself if Sauviat was out on one of his journeys. At day¬ 
break you might hear the dealer in old iron taking down the 
shutters, the dog was let loose into the street, and very soon 
Sauviat’s wife came down to help her husband to arrange their 
wares. Against the low wall of the shop in the Rue de la 
Cite and the Rue de la Vieille-Poste, they propped their 
heterogeneous collection of broken gun-barrels, cart springs, 
and harness bells—all the gimcracks, in short, which served as 
a trade sign and gave a sufficiently poverty-stricken look to a 


6 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


shop which in reality often contained twenty thousand francs 
worth of lead, steel, and bell metal. The retired hawker and 
his wife never spoke of their money ; they hid it as a male¬ 
factor conceals a crime, and for a long while were suspected 
of clipping gold louis and silver crowns. 

When old Champagnac died, the Sauviats made no inven¬ 
tory. They searched every corner and cranny of the old 
man’s house with the quickness of rats, stripped it bare as a 
corpse, and sold the tinware themselves in their own shop. 
Once every year, when December came round, Sauviat would 
go to Paris, traveling in a public conveyance ; from which 
premises, observers in the quarter concluded that the dealer in 
old iron saw to his investments in Paris himself, so that he 
might keep the amount of his money a secret. It came out 
in after years that as a lad Sauviat had known one of the most 
celebrated metal merchants in Paris, a fellow-countryman 
from Auvergne, and that Sauviat’s savings were invested with 
the prosperous firm of Brezac, the corner-stone of the famous 
association of the Black Band, which was started, as has been 
said, by Sauviat’s advice, and in which he held shares. 

Sauviat was short and stout. He had a weary-looking face 
and an honest expression, which attracted customers, and was 
of no little use to him in the matter of sales. The dryness of 
his affirmations, and the perfect indifference of his manner, 
aided his pretensions. It was not easy to guess the color of 
the skin beneath the black metallic grime which covered his 
curly hair and countenance seamed with the smallpox. His 
forehead was not without a certain nobility; indeed, he 
resembled the traditional type chosen by painters for Saint 
Peter, the man of the people among the apostles, the roughest 
among their number, and likewise the shrewdest; Sauviat had 
the hands of an indefatigable worker, rifted by ineffaceable 
cracks, square-shaped, and coarse and large. The muscular 
framework of his chest seemed indestructible. All through 
his life he dressed like a hawker, wearing the thick iron-bound 


V^IRONIQUE. 7 

shoes, the blue stockings which his wife knitted for him, the 
leather gaiters, breeches of bottle-green velveteen, a coat with 
short skirts of the same material, and a flapped waistcoat, 
where the copper key of a silver watch dangled from an iron 
chain, worn by constant friction till it shone like polished 
steel. Round his neck he wore a cotton handkerchief, frayed 
by the constant rubbing of his beard. On Sundays and holi¬ 
days he appeared in a maroon overcoat so carefully kept that 
he bought a new one but twice in a score of years. 

As for their manner of living, the convicts in the hulks 
might be said to fare sumptuously in comparison ; it was a 
day of high festival indeed when they ate meat. Before La 
Sauviat could bring herself to part with the money needed 
for their daily sustenance, she rummaged through the two 
pockets under her skirt, and never drew forth coin that 
was not clipped or light weight, eyeing the crowns of six livres 
and fifty-sous pieces dolorously before she changed one of 
them. The Sauviats contented themselves, for the most part, 
with herrings, dried peas, cheese, hard-boiled eggs and salad, 
and vegetables dressed in the cheapest way. They lived from 
hand to mouth, laying in nothing except a bundle of garlic now 
and again, or a rope of onions, which could not spoil, and 
cost them a mere trifle. As for firewood. La Sauviat bought 
the few sticks which they required in winter of the faggot- 
sellers day by day. By seven o’clock in winter and nine in 
summer the shutters were fastened, the master and mistress in 
bed, and their huge dog, who picked up his living in the 
kitchens of the quarter, on guard in the shop; Mother Sau¬ 
viat did not spend three francs a year on candles. 

A joy came into their sober hard-working lives; it was a 
joy that came in the natural order of things, and caused the 
only outlay which they had been known to make. In May, 
1802, La Sauviat bore a daughter. No one was called in to her 
assistance, and five days later she was stirring about her house 
again. She nursed her child herself, sitting on the chair in 


8 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


the doorway, selling her wares as usual, with the baby at her 
breast. Her milk cost nothing, so for two years she suckled 
the little one, who was none the worse for it, for little Vero- 
nique grew to be the prettiest child in the lower town, so 
pretty indeed that passers-by would stop to look at her. The 
neighbors saw in old Sauviat traces of a tenderness of which 
they had believed him incapable. While the wife made the 
dinner ready he used to rock the little one in his arms, croon¬ 
ing the refrain of some Auvergnat song; and the workmen 
as they passed sometimes saw him sitting motionless, gazing 
at little Veronique asleep on her mother’s knee. His gruff 
voice grew gentle for the child; he would wipe his hands on 
his trousers before taking her up. When Veronique was learn¬ 
ing to walk, her father squatted on his heels four paces away, 
holding out his arms to her, gleeful smiles puckering the deep 
wrinkles on the harsh, stern face of bronze ; it seemed as if 
the man of iron, brass, and lead had once more become flesh 
and blood. As he stood leaning against the pillar motionless 
as a statue, he would start at a cry from Veronique, and spring 
over the iron to find her, for she spent her childhood in play¬ 
ing about among the metallic spoils of old chateaux heaped 
up in the recesses of the shop, and never hurt herself; and if 
she played in the street or with the neighbors’ children, she 
was never allowed out of her mother’s sight. 

It is worth while to add that the Sauviats were eminently 
devout. Even when the Revolution was at its height Sauviat 
kept Sundays and holidays punctually. Twice in those days 
he had all but lost his head for going to hear mass said by a 
priest who had not taken the oath to the Republic. He found 
himself in prison at last, justly accused of conniving at the 
escape of a bishop whose life he had saved ; but luckily for 
the hawker, steel files and iron bars were old acquaintances of 
his, and he made his escape. Whereupon the court finding 
that he failed to put in an appearance, gave judgment by 
default, and condemned him to death; and it may be added 


VAROAJQUE. 9 

that, as he never returned to clear himself, he finally died 
under sentence of death. In his religious sentiments his wife 
shared; the parsimonious rule of the household w'as only re¬ 
laxed in the name of religion. Punctually the two paid their 
quota for sacramental bread, and gave money for charity. If 
the curate of Saint-Etienne came to ask for alms, Sauviat or 
his wife gave without fuss or hesitation what they believed to 
be their due share towards the funds of the parish. The 
broken Virgin on their pillar was decked with sprays of box 
when Easter came round ; and so long as there w^ere flowers, 
the passers-by saw that the blue-glass bouquet-holders were 
never empty, and this especially after Veronique’s birth. 
Whenever there was a procession the Sauviats never failed to 
drape their house with hangings and garlands, and contributed 
to the erection and adornment of the altar—the pride of their 
street. 

So Veronique was brought up in the Christian faith. As 
soon as she was seven years old she w’as educated by a gray 
sister, an Auvergnate, to whom the Sauviats had rendered 
some little service; for both of them were sufficiently obliging 
so long as their time or their substance was not in question, 
and helpful after the manner of the poor, who lend themselves 
with a certain heartiness. It was the Franciscan sister who 
taught Veronique to read and write; she instructed her pupil 
in the History of the People of God, in the Catechism and 
the Old and New Testaments, and, to a certain small extent, 
in the rules of arithmetic. That was all. The good sister 
thought that it would be enough, but even this w'as too much. 

Veronique at nine years of age astonished the quarter by 
her beauty. Every one admired a face which might one day 
be worthy of the pencil of some impassioned seeker after an 
ideal type. ‘‘The little Virgin,” as they called her, gave 
promise of being graceful of form and fair of face ; the thick, 
bright hair which set off the delicate outlines of her features 
completed her resemblance to the Madonna. Those who have 


10 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


seen the divine child-virgin in Titian’s great picture of the 
Presentation in the Temple may know what Veronique was 
like in these years; she had the same frank innocence of ex¬ 
pression, the same look as of a wondering seraph in her eyes, 
the same noble simplicity, the same queenly bearing. 

Two years later, Veronique fell ill of the smallpox, and 
would have died of it but for Sister Martha, who nursed her. 
During those two months, while her life was in danger, the 
quarter learned how tenderly the Sauviats loved their daughter. 
Sauviat attended no sales and went nowhere. All day long he 
stayed in the shop, or went restlessly up and down the stairs, 
and he and his wife sat up night after night with the child. 
So deep was his dumb grief that no one dared to speak to him ; 
the neighbors watched him pityingly, and asked for news of 
Veronique of no one but Sister Martha. The days came when 
the child’s life hung by a thread, and neighbors and passers- 
by saw, for the first and only time in Sauviat’s life, the slow 
tears rising under his eyelids and rolling down his hollow 
cheeks. He never wiped them away. For hours he sat like 
one stupefied, not daring to go upstairs to the sick-room, 
staring before him with unseeing eyes; he might have been 
robbed, and he would not have noticed it. 

Veronique’s life was saved, not so her beauty. A uniform 
tint, in which red and brown were evenly blended, overspread 
her face; the disease left countless little scars which coarsened 
the surface of the skin, and wrought havoc with the delicate 
underlying tissues. Nor had her forehead escaped the rav¬ 
ages of the scourge ; it was brown, and covered with dints 
like the marks of hammer-strokes. No combination is more 
discordant than a muddy-brown complexion and fair hair ; 
the pre-established harmony of coloring is broken. Deep 
irregular seams in the surface had spoiled the purity of her 
features and the delicacy of the outlines of her face ; the 
Grecian profile, the subtle curves of a chin finely moulded as 
white porcelain, were scarcely discernible between the coars- 


v^:ronique. 


11 


ened skin ; the disease had only spared what it was powerless 
to injure—the teeth and eyes. But Veronique did not lose 
her grace and beauty of form, the full rounded curves of her 
figure, nor the slenderness of her waist. At fifteen she was a 
graceful girl, and (for the comfort of the Sauviats) a good 
girl and devout, hard-working, industrious, always at home. 

After her convalescence and first communion, her father and 
mother arranged for her the two rooms on the third floor. 
Some glimmering notion of what is meant by comfort passed 
through old Sauviat’s mind; hard fare might do for him and 
his wife, but now a dim idea of making compensation for a 
loss which his daughter had not felt as yet crossed his brain. 
Veronique had lost the beauty of which these two had been 
so proud, and thenceforward became the dearer to them and 
the more precious in their eyes. 

So one day Sauviat came in, carrying a carpet, a chance 
purchase, on his back, and this he himself nailed down on 
the floor of Veronique’s room. He went to a sale of furni¬ 
ture at a chiteau and secured for her the red damask-curtained 
bed of some great lady, and hangings and chairs and easy- 
chairs covered with the same stuff*. Gradually he furnished 
his daughter’s rooms with second-hand purchases, in complete 
ignorance of the real value of the things. He set pots of 
mignonette on the window-sill, and brought back flowers for 
her from his wanderings ; sometimes it was a rosebush, some¬ 
times a tree-carnation, and plants of all kinds, doubtless given 
to him by gardeners and innkeepers. If Veronique had 
known enough of other people to draw comparisons, and to 
understand their manners of life and the characters and the 
ignorance of her parents, she would have known how great 
the affection was which showed itself in these little things; 
but the girl gave her father and mother the love that springs 
from an exquisite nature—an instinctive and unreasoning 
love. 

Veronique must have the finest linen which her mother 


12 


THE COUNTRY PARSON, 


could buy, and La Sauviat allowed her daughter to choose her 
own dresses. Both father and mother were pleased with her 
moderation ; Veronique had no ruinous tastes. A blue-silk 
gown for holiday wear, a winter dress of coarse merino for 
working-days, and a striped cotton gown in summer; with 
these she was content. 

On Sunday she went to mass with her father and mother, 
and walked with them after vespers along the banks of the 
Vienne or in the neighborhood of the town. All through the 
week she stayed in the house, busy over the tapestry-work, 
which was sold for the benefit of the poor, or the plain sewing 
for the hospital—no life could be more simple, more innocent, 
more exemplary than hers. She had other occupations beside 
her sewing; she read to herself, but only such books as the 
curate of Saint-Etienne loaned to her. (Sister Martha had 
introduced the priest to the Sauviat family.) 

For Veronique all the laws of the household economy were 
set aside. Her mother delighted to cook dainty fare for her, 
and made separate dishes for her daughter. Father and 
mother might continue, as before, to eat the walnuts and the 
hard bread, the herrings, and the dried peas fried with a little 
salt butter; but for Veronique, nothing was fresh enough nor 
good enough. 

Veronique must be a great expense to you,” remarked the 
hatter who lived opposite. He estimated old Sauviat’s fortune 
at a hundred thousand francs, and had thoughts of Veronique 
for his son. 

Yes, neighbor ; yes, neighbor; yes,” old Sauviat answered, 

she might ask me for ten crowns, and I should let her have 
them, I should. She has everything she wants, but she 
never asks for anything. She is as good and gentle as a 
lamb!” 

And, in fact, Veronique did not know the price of any¬ 
thing ; she had no wants; she never saw a piece of gold till 
the day of her marriage, and had no money of her own ; her 


VilRONTQVE. 


1 .^ 


mother bought and gave to her all that she wished, and even 
for a beggar she drew upon her mother’s pockets. 

^‘Then she doesn’t cost you much,” commented the hatter. 

“That is what you think, is it?” retorted Sauviat. “You 
wouldn’t do it on less than forty crowns a year. You should 
see her room ! There is a hundred crowns’ worth of furniture 
in it; but when you have only one girl, you can indulge your¬ 
self \ and, after all, what little we have will all be hers some 
day.” 

Little ? You must be rich. Father Sauviat. These forty 
years you have been in a line of business where there are no 
losses.” 

“ Oh, they shouldn’t cut my ears off for a matter of twelve 
hundred francs,” said the dealer in old iron. 

From the day when Veronique lost the delicate beauty 
which every one had admired in her childish face, old Sauviat 
had worked twice as hard as before. His business revived 
again, and prospered so well, that he went to Paris not once, 
but several times a year. People guessed his motives. If his 
girl had gone off in looks, he would make up for it in money, 
to use his own language. 

When Veronique was about fifteen another change was 
wrought in the household ways. The father and mother went 
up to their daughter’s room of an evening, and listened while 
she read aloud to them from the “Lives of the Saints,” or 
the “ Lettres edifiantes,” or from some other book loaned by 
the curate of Saint-Etienne. The lamp was set behind a 
glass globe full of water, and Mother Sauviat knitted indus¬ 
triously, thinking in this way to pay for the oil. The neigh¬ 
bors opposite could look into the room and see the two old 
people sitting there, motionless as two carved Chinese figures, 
listening intently, admiring their daughter with all the power 
of an intelligence that was dim enough save in matters of busi¬ 
ness or religion. Doubtless there have been girls as pure as 
Veronique—there have been none purer nor more modest 


14 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Her confession surely filled the angels with wonder, and glad¬ 
dened the Virgin in heaven. She was now sixteen years old, 
and perfectly developed; you beheld in her the woman she 
would be. She was a medium height, neither the father nor 
the mother was tall; but the most striking thing about her 
figure was its lissome grace, the sinuous, gracious curves which 
nature herself traces so finely, which the artist strives so pain¬ 
fully to render; the soft contours that reveal themselves to 
practiced eyes, for in spite of folds of linen and thickness of 
stuff, the dress is always moulded and informed by the body. 
Simple, natural and sincere, Veronique set this physical beauty 
in relief by her unaffected freedom of movement. She pro¬ 
duced her full and entire effect,” if it is permissible to make 
use of the forcible legal phrase. She had the full-fleshed arms 
of an Auvergnate, the red, plump hands of a buxom inn- 
servant, and feet strongly made, but shapely, and in propor¬ 
tion to her height. 

Sometimes there was wrought in her an exquisite mysterious 
change; suddenly it was revealed that in this frame dwelt a 
woman hidden from all eyes but Love’s. Perhaps it was this 
transfiguration which awakened an admiration of her beauty 
in the father and mother, who astonished the neighbors by 
speaking of it as something divine. The first to see it were 
the clergy of the cathedral and the communicants at the 
table of the Lord. When Veronique’s face was lighted up by 
impassioned feeling—and the mystical ecstasy which filled her 
at such times is one of the strongest emotions in the life of 
so innocent a girl—it seemed as if a bright inner radiance 
effaced the traces of the smallpox, and the pure, bright face 
appeared once more in the first beauty of childhood. Scarcely 
obscured by the thin veil of tissues coarsened by the dis¬ 
ease, her face shone like some flower in dim places under the 
sea, when the sunlight strikes down and invests it with a 
mysterious glory. For a few brief moments Veronique was 
transfigured, the little Virgin appeared and disappeared like 


V&RONIQUE. . 15 

a vision from heaven. The pupils of her eyes, which pos¬ 
sessed in a high degree the power of contracting, seemed at 
such seasons to dilate and overspread the blue of the iris, 
which diminished till it became nothing more than a slender 
ring ; the change in the eyes, which thus grew piercing as the 
eagle’s, completing the wonderful change in the face. Was it 
a storm of repressed and passionate longing, was it some 
power which had its source in the depths of her nature, which 
made those eyes dilate in broad daylight as other eyes widen 
in shadow, darkening their heavenly blue? Whatever the 
cause, it was impossible to look upon Veronique with indiffer¬ 
ence as she returned to her place after having been made one 
with God ; all present beheld her in the radiance of her early 
beauty; at such times she would have eclipsed the fairest 
woman in her loveliness. What a charm for a jealous lover in 
that veil of flesh which should hide his love from all other 
eyes; a veil which the hand of love could raise to let fall 
again upon the rapture of wedded bliss. V^ronique’s lips, 
faultless in their curves, seemed to have been painted scarlet, 
so richly were they colored by the pure glow of the blood. 
Her chin and the lower part of her face were a little full, in 
the sense that painters give to the word, and this heaviness 
of contour is, by the unalterable laws of physiognomy, a cer¬ 
tain sign of a capacity for almost morbid violence of passion. 
Her finely-moulded but almost imperious brow was crowned 
by a glorious diadem of thick abundant hair; the gold had 
deepened to a chestnut tint. 

From her sixteenth year till the day of her marriage 
Veronique’s demeanor was thoughtful and full of melancholy. 
In an existence so lonely she fell, as solitary souls are w^ont, 
to watching the grand spectacle of the life within, the pro¬ 
gress of her thoughts, the ever-changing phantasmagoria of 
mental visions, the yearnings kindled by her pure life. Those 
who passed along the Rue de la Cit6 on sunny days had only 
to look up to see the Sauviats’ girl sitting at her window with 


16 


the country parson. 


a bit of sewing or embroidery in her hand, drawing the 
needle in and out with a somewhat dreamy air. Her head 
stood out in sharp contrast against its background among the 
flowers which gave a touch of poetry to the prosaic, cracked, 
brown window-sill, and the small leaded panes of her case¬ 
ment. At times a reflected glow from the red damask cur¬ 
tains added to the effect of the face so brightly colored 
already; it looked like some rosy-red flower above the little 
skyey garden, which she tended so carefully upon the ledge. 
So the quaint old house contained something still more 
quaint—a portrait of a young girl, worthy of Mieris, Van 
Ostade, Terburg, or Gerard Dow, framed in one of the old, 
worn, and blackened, and almost ruinous windows which 
Dutch artists loved to paint. If a stranger happened to 
glance up at the second floor, and stand agape with wonder at 
its construction, old Sauviat below wotild thrust out his head 
till he could look up the face of the overhanging story. He 
was sure to see Veronique there at the window. Then he 
would go in again, rubbing his hands, and say to his wife in 
the patois of Auvergne: 

“ Hullo, old woman, there is some one admiring your 
daughter! ” 

In 1820 an event occurred in Veronique’s simple and un¬ 
eventful life. It was a little thing, which would have exer¬ 
cised no influence upon another girl, but destined to effect a 
fatal influence on V^ronique’s future life. On the day of a sup¬ 
pressed church festival, a working-day for the rest of the town, 
the Sauviats shut their shop and went first to mass and then 
for a walk. On their way into the country they passed by 
a bookseller’s shop, and among the books displayed outside 
Veronique saw one called Paul et Virginie. The fancy took 
her to buy it for the sake of the engraving; her father paid 
five francs for the fatal volume, and slipped it into the vast 
pocket of his overcoat. 

‘‘Wouldn’t it be better to show it to M. le Vicaire?** 


VEI^ONJQUE. 


17 


asked the mother ; for her any printed book was something 
of an abracadabra, which might or might not be for evil. 

‘‘Yes, I thought I would,” Veronique answered simply. 

She spent that night in reading the book, one of the most 
touching romances in the French language. The love scenes, 
half-biblical, and worthy of the early ages of the world, 
wrought havoc in Veronique’s heart. A hand, whether dia¬ 
bolical or divine, had raised for her the veil which hitherto 
had covered nature. On the morrow the little Virgin within 
the beautiful girl thought her flowers fairer than on the even¬ 
ing of the day before ; she understood their symbolical lan¬ 
guage, she gazed up at the blue sky with exaltation, causeless 
tears rose to her eyes. 

In every woman’s life there comes a moment when she 
understands her destiny, or her organization, hitherto mute, 
speaks with authority. It is not always a man singled out by 
an involuntary and stolen glance who reveals the possession 
of a sixth sense, hitherto dormant; more frequently it is some 
sight that comes with the force of a surprise, a landscape, a 
page of a book, some day of high pomp, some ceremony of 
the Church ; the scent of growing flowers, the delicate bright¬ 
ness of a misty morning, the intimate sweetness of divine 
music—and something suddenly stirs in body or soul. For 
the lonely child, a prisoner in the dark house, brought up by 
parents almost as rough and simple as peasants; for the girl 
who had never heard an improper word, whose innocent mind 
had never received the slightest taint of evil; for the angelic 
pupil of Sister Martha and of the good curate of Saint-Etienne, 
the revelation of love came through a charming book from the 
hand of genius. No peril would have lurked in it for any 
other, but for her an obscene work would have been less dan¬ 
gerous. Corruption is relative. There are lofty and virginal 
natures which a single thought suffices to corrupt, a thought 
which works the more ruin because the necessity of combating 
it is not foreseen. 

2 


18 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


The next day Veronique showed her book to the good 
priest, who approved the purchase of a work so widely known 
for its childlike innocence and purity. But the heat of the 
tropics, the beauty of the land described in Paul et Virginity 
the almost childish innocence of a love scarcely of this earth, 
had wrought upon Veronique’s imagination. She was capti¬ 
vated by the noble and sweet personality of the author, and 
carried away towards the cult of the ideal, that fatal religion. 
She dreamed of a lover, a young man like Paul, and brooded 
over soft imaginings of that life of lovers in some fragrant 
island. Below Limoges, and almost opposite the Faubourg 
Saint-Martial, there is a little island in the Vienne; this, in 
her childish fancy, Veronique called the Isle of France, and, 
filled with the fantastic creations of a young girl’s dreams, 
vague shadows endowed with the dreamer’s own perfections. 

She sat more than ever in the window in those days, and 
watched the workmen as they came and went. Her parents’ 
humble position forbade her to think of any one but an arti¬ 
san ; yet, accustomed as she doubtless was to the idea of 
becoming a workingman’s wife, she was conscious of an in¬ 
stinctive refinement which shrank from anything rough or 
coarse. So she began to weave for herself a romance such as 
most girls weave in their secret hearts for themselves alone. 
With the enthusiasm which might be expected of a refined 
and girlish imagination, she seized on the attractive idea of 
ennobling one of these workingmen, of raising him to the 
level of her dreams. She made (who knows ?) a Paul of some 
young man whose face she saw in the street, simply that she 
might attach her wild fancies to some human creature, as the 
overcharged atmosphere of a winter day deposits dew on the 
branches of a tree by the wayside, for the frost to transform 
into magical crystals. How should she escape a fall into the 
depths ? for if she often seemed to return to earth from far-off 
heights with a reflected glory about her brows, yet oftener she 
appeared to bring with her flowers gathered on the brink of a 


v^:ronique. 


19 


torrent-stream which she had followed down into the abyss. 
On warm evenings she asked her old father to walk out with 
her, and never lost an opportunity of a stroll by the Vienne. 
She went into ecstasy at every step over the beauty of the sky 
and land, over the red glories of the sunset, or the joyous 
freshness of dewy mornings, and the sense of these things, the 
poetry of nature, passed into her soul. 

She curled and waved the hair which she used to wear in 
simple plaits about her head ; she thought more about her 
dress. The young, wild vine which had grown as its nature 
prompted about the old elm tree was transplanted and trimmed 
and pruned, and grew upon a dainty green trellis. 

One evening in December, 1822, when Sauviat (now seventy 
years old) had returned from a journey to Paris, the curate 
dropped in, and after a few commonplaces— 

“You must think of marrying your daughter, Sauviat,” 
said the priest. “ At your age you should no longer delay 
the fulfillment of an important duty.” 

“ Why, has Veronique a mind to be married ?” asked the 
amazed old man. 

“As you please, father,” the girl answered, lowering her 
eyes. 

“ We will marry her,” cried portly Mother Sauviat, smiling 
as she spoke. 

“Why didn’t you say something about this before I left 
home, mother? ” Sauviat asked. “ I shall have to go back to 
Paris again.” 

In Jerome-Baptiste Sauviat’s eyes plenty of money appeared 
to be synonymous with happiness. He had always regarded 
love and marriage in their purely physical and practical as¬ 
pects ; marriage was a means of transmitting his property 
(he being no more) to another self; so he vowed that Veron¬ 
ique should marry a well-to-do man. Indeed, for a long while 
past this had become a fixed idea with him. His neighbor 
the hatter, who was retiring from business, and had an income 


20 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


of two thousand livres a year, had already asked for Veronique 
for his son and successor (for Veronique was spoken of in the 
quarter as a good girl of exemplary life), and had been politely 
refused. Sauviat had not so much as mentioned this to Ver¬ 
onique. 

The curate was Veronique’s director, and a great man in 
the Sauviats’ eyes; so the day after he had spoken of Veron¬ 
ique’s marriage as a necessity, old Sauviat shaved himself, put 
on his Sunday clothes, and went out. He said not a word to 
his wife and daughter, but the women knew that the old man 
had gone out to find a son-in-law. Sauviat went to M. Graslin. 

M. Graslin, a rich banker of Limoges, had left his native 
Auvergne, like Sauviat himself, without a sou in his pocket. 
He had begun life as a porter in a banker’s service, and from 
that position had made his way, like many another capitalist, 
partly by thrift, partly by sheer luck. A cashier at five-and- 
twenty, and at five-and thirty a partner in the firm of Ferret 
& Grossetete, he at last bought out the original partners, and 
became sole owner of the bank. His two colleagues went to 
live in the country, leaving their capital in his hands at a low 
rate of interest. Pierre Graslin, at the age of forty-seven, 
was believed to possess six hundred thousand francs at the 
least. His reputation for riches had recently increased, and 
the whole department had applauded his free-handedness 
when he built a house for himself in the new quarter of the 
Place des Arbres, which adds not a little to the appearance 
of Limoges. It was a handsome house, on the plan of align¬ 
ment, with a facade like a neighboring public building; but 
though the mansion had been finished for six months, Pierre 
Graslin hesitated to furnish k. His house had cost him so 
dear, that at the thought of living in it he drew back. Self- 
love, it may be, had enticed him to exceed the limits he had 
prudently observed all his life long; he thought, moreover, 
with the plain sense of a man of business, that it was only 
right that the inside of his house should be in keeping with 


VERONIQUE. 21 

the programme adopted with the facade. The plate and fur¬ 
niture and accessories needed for the housekeeping in such a 
mansion would cost more, according to his computations, 
than the actual outlay on the building. So, in spite of the 
town gossip, the broad grins of commercial circles, and the 
charitable surmises of his neighbors, .Pierre Graslin stayed 
where he was on the damp and dirty ground-floor dwelling in 
the Rue Montantmanigne, where his fortune had been made, 
and the great house stood empty. People might talk, but 
Graslin was happy in the approbation of his two old sleeping 
partners, who praised him for displaying such uncommon 
strength of mind. 

Such a fortune and such a life as Graslin’s is sure to excite 
plentiful covetousness in a country town. During the past 
ten years more than one proposition of marriage had been 
skillfully insinuated. But the estate of a bachelor was emi¬ 
nently suited to a man who worked from morning to night, 
overwhelmed with business, and wearied by his daily round, a 
man as keen after money as a sportsman after game; so Graslin 
had fallen into none of the snares set for him by ambitious 
mothers who coveted a brilliant position for their daughters. 
Graslin, the Sauviat of a somewhat higher social sphere, did 
not spend two francs a day upon himself, and dressed no 
better than his second clerk. His whole staff consisted of a 
couple of clerks and an office boy, though he went through 
an amount of business which might fairly be called immense, 
so multitudinous were its ramifications. One of the clerks 
saw to the correspondence, the other kept the books; and 
for the rest Pierre Graslin was both the soul and body of his 
business. He chose his clerks from his family circle \ they 
were of his own stamp, trustworthy, intelligent, and accus¬ 
tomed to work. As for the office boy, he led the life of a 
dray horse. 

Graslin rose all the year round before five in the morning, 
and was never in bed till eleven o’clock at night. His char- 

O 


22 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


woman, an old Auvergnate, who came in to do the housework 
and to cook his meals, had strict orders never to exceed the 
sum of three francs for the total daily expense of the house¬ 
hold. The brown earthenware, the strong coarse tablecloths 
and sheets, were in keeping with the manners and customs of 
an establishment in which the porter was the man of all work, 
and the clerks made their own beds. The blackened deal 
tables, the ragged straw-bottomed chairs with the holes 
through the centre, the pigeon-hole writing-desks and ram¬ 
shackle bedsteads, in fact, all the furniture of the counting- 
house and the three rooms above it, would not have brought 
three thousand francs, even if the safe had been included, a 
colossal solid iron structure built into the wall itself, before 
which the porter nightly slept with a couple of dogs at his 
feet. It had been a legacy from the old firm to the present 
one. 

Graslin was not often seen in society, where a great deal 
was heard about him. He dined with the receiver-general 
(a business connection) two or three times a year, and he had 
been known to take a meal at the prefecture; for, to his own 
intense disgust, he had been nominated a member of the 
general council of the department. ‘‘He wasted his time 
there,” he said. Occasionally, when he had concluded a 
bargain with a business acquaintance, he was detained to lunch 
or dinner; and, lastly, he was sometimes compelled to call 
upon his old partners, who spent the winter in Limoges. So 
slight was the hold which social relations had upon him that 
at twenty-five years of age Graslin had not so much as offered 
a glass of water to any creature. 

People used to say, “ That is M. Graslin ! ” when he passed 
along the street, which is to say, “ There is a man who came 
to Limoges without a farthing, and has made an immense 
amount of money.” The Auvergnat banker became a kind 
of pattern and example held up by fathers of families to their 
offspring—and an epigram which more than one wife cast in 


VJ^RONIQUE, 


23 


her husband’s teeth. It is easy to imagine the motives which 
induced this principal pivot in the financial machinery of 
Limoges to repel the matrimonial advances so perseveringly 
made to him. The daughters of Messieurs Ferret and Gros- 
setdte had been married before Graslin was in a position to 
ask for them; but as each of these ladies had daughters in 
the school-room, people let Graslin alone at last, taking it for 
granted that either old Ferret or Grossetdte the shrewd had 
arranged a match to be carried out some future day, when 
Graslin should be bridegroom to one of the granddaughters. 

Sauviat had watched his fellow-countryman’s rise and prog¬ 
ress more closely than any one. He had known Graslin ever 
since he came to Limoges, but their relative positions had 
changed so much (in appearance at any rate) that the friend¬ 
ship became an acquaintance, renewed only at long intervals. 
Still, in his- quality of fellow-countryman, Graslin was never 
above having a chat with Sauviat in the Auvergne dialect if 
the two happened to meet, and in their own language they 
dropped the formal you ” for the more familiar “ thee ” 
and “thou.” 

In 1823, when the youngest of the brothers Grosset6te, the 
Receiver-General of Bourges, married his daughter to the 
youngest son of the Comte de Fontaine, Sauviat saw that the 
Grossetates had no mind to take Graslin into their family. 

After a conference with the banker, old Sauviat returned in 
high glee to dine in his daughter’s room. 

“ Veronique will be Madame Graslin,” he told the two 
women. 

“ Madame Graslin / ” cried Mother Sauviat, in amazement. 

“Is it possible?” asked Veronique. She did not know 
Graslin by sight, but the name produced much such an effect 
on her imagination as the word Rothschild upon a Farisian 
shop-girl. 

“Yes. It is settled,” old Sauviat continued solemnly. 
“ Graslin will furnish his house very grandly; he will have the 


24 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


finest carriage from Paris that money can buy for our daughter, 
and the best pair of horses in Limousin. He will buy an 
estate worth five hundred thousand francs for her, and settle 
the house on her besides. In short, Veronique will be the first 
lady in Limoges, and the richest in the department, and can 
do just as she likes with Graslin.” 

Veronique’s boundless affection for her father and mother, 
her bringing-up, her religious training, her utter ignorance, 
prevented her from raising a single objection; it did not so 
much as occur to her that she had been disposed of without 
her own consent. The next day Sauviat set out for Paris, and 
was away for about a week. 

Pierre Graslin, as you may imagine, was no great talker; he 
went straight to the point, and acted promptly. A thing 
determined upon was a thing done at once. So in February, 
1822, a strange piece of news surprised Limoges like a sudden 
thunderclap. Graslin’s great house was being handsomely 
furnished. Heavy wagon-loads from Paris arrived daily to be 
unpacked in the courtyard. Rumors flew about the town 
concerning the good taste displayed in the beautiful furniture, 
modern and antique. A magnificent service of plate came 
down from Odiot’s by the mail; and (actually) three car¬ 
riages !—a caleche, a brougham, and a cabriolet—arrived care¬ 
fully packed in straw as if they had been jewels. 

M. Graslin is going to be married ! ” The words passed 
from mouth to mouth, and in the course of a single evening 
the news filtered through the drawing-rooms of the Limousin 
aristocracy to the back parlors and shops in the suburbs, till 
all Limoges, in fact, had heard it. But whom was he going to 
marry ? Nobody could answer the question. There was a 
mystery in Limoges. 

As soon as Sauviat came back from Paris, Graslin made his 
first nocturnal visit, at half-past nine o’clock. Veronique 
knew that he was coming. She wore her blue-silk gown, cut 
square at the throat, and a wide collar of cambric with a 


VlROXIQUE. 


25 


deep hem. Her hair she had simply parted into two bandeaux, 
waved and gathered into a Grecian knot at the back of her 
head. She was sitting in a tapestry-covered chair near the fire¬ 
side, where her mother occupied a great armchair with a 
carved back and crimson velvet cushions, a bit of salvage 
from some ruined chateau. A blazing fire burned on the 
hearth. Upon the mantel-shelf, on either side of an old 
clock (whose value the Sauviats certainly did not know), 
stood two old-fashioned sconces \ six wax-candles in the 
sockets among the brazen vine-stems shed their light on the 
brown chamber, and on Veronique in her bloom. The old 
mother had put on her best dress. 

In the midst of the silence that reigned in the streets at 
that silent hour, with the dimly-lit staircase as a background, 
Graslin appeared for the first time before Veronique—the shy 
childish girl whose head was still full of sweet fancies of love 
derived from Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s book. Graslin was 
short and thin. His thick black hair stood up straight on his 
forehead like bristles in a brush, in startling contrast with a 
face red as a drunkard’s, and covered with suppurating or 
bleeding pustules. The eruption was neither scrofula nor 
leprosy, it was simply a result of an overheated condition of 
the blood; unflagging toil, anxiety, fanatical application to 
business, late hours, a life steady and sober to the point of 
abstemiousness, had induced a complaint which seemed to be 
related to both diseases. In spite of partners, clerks, and 
doctors, the banker had never brought himself to submit to a 
regimen which might have alleviated the symptoms or cured 
an evil, trifling at first, which was daily aggravated by neglect 
as time went on. He wished to be rid of it, and sometimes 
for a few days would take the baths and swallow the doses 
prescribed ; but the round of business carried him away, and 
he forgot to take care of himself. Now and again he would 
talk of going away for a short holiday, and trying the waters 
somewhere or other for a cure, but where is the man in hot 


26 


THE COUNTRY PERSON. 


pursuit of millions who has been known to stop? In this 
flushed countenance gleamed two gray eyes, the iris speckled 
with brown dots and streaked with fine green threads radi¬ 
ating from the pupil—two covetous eyes, piercing eyes that 
went to the depths of the heart, implacable eyes in which 
you read resolution and integrity and business faculty. A 
snub nose, thick blubber lips, a prominent rounded forehead, 
grinning cheek-bones, coarse ears corroded by the sour humors 
of the blood—altogether Graslin looked like an antique satyr 
—a satyr tricked out in a great coat, a black satin waistcoat, 
and a white neckcloth knotted about his neck. The strong 
muscular shoulders, which had once carried heavy burdens, 
stooped somewhat already; the thin legs, which seemed to be 
imperfectly jointed with the short thighs, trembled beneath 
the weight of that over-developed torso. The bony fingers 
covered with hair were like claws, as is often the case with 
those who tell gold all day long. Two parallel lines furrowed 
the face from the cheek-bones to the mouth—an unerring sign 
that here was a man whose whole soul was taken up with 
material interests; while the eyebrows sloped up towards the 
temples in a manner which indicated a habit of swift decision. 
Grim and hard though the mouth looked, there was something 
there that suggested an underlying kindliness, real good- 
heartedness, not called forth in a life of money-getting, and 
choked, it may be, by cares of this world, but which might 
revive at contact' with a woman. 

At the sight of this apparition, something clutched cruelly 
at Veronique’s heart. Everything grew dark before her eyes. 
She thought she cried out, but in reality she sat still, mute, 
staring with fixed eyes. 

Veronique,” said old Sauviat, this is M. Graslin.” 

Veronique rose to her feet and bowed, then she sank down 
into her chair again, and her eyes sought her mother. But 
La Sauviat was smiling at the millionaire, looking so happy, 
so very happy, that the poor child gathered courage to hide 


VERONIQUE. 27 

her violent feeling of repulsion and the shoclc she had re¬ 
ceived. In the midst of the conversation which followed, 
something was said about Graslin’s health. The banker 
looked naively at himself in the beveled mirror framed in 
ebony. 

“I am not handsome, mademoiselle,” he said, and he ex¬ 
plained that the redness of his face was due to his busy life, 
and told them how he had disobeyed his doctor's orders. He 
hoped that as soon as he had a woman to look after him and 
his household, a wife who would take more care of him than 
he took of himself, he should look quite a different man. 

As if anybody married a man for his looks, mate! ” cried 
the dealer in old iron, slapping his fellow-countryman on the 
thigh. 

Graslin’s explanation appealed to instinctive feelings which 
more or less fill every woman’s heart. Veronique bethought 
herself of her own face, marred by a hideous disease, and in 
her Christian humility she thought better of her first impres¬ 
sion. Just then some one whistled in the street outside, 
Graslin went down, followed by Sauviat, who felt uneasy. 
Both men soon returned. The porter had brought the first 
bouquet of flowers, which had been in readiness for the occa¬ 
sion. At the reappearance of the banker with this stack of 
exotic blossoms, which he offered to his future bride, Ver- 
onique’s feelings were very different from those with which 
she had first seen Graslin himself. The room was filled with 
the sweet scent, for Veronique it was a realization of her day¬ 
dreams of the tropics. She had never seen white camellias 
before, had never known the scent of the Alpine cytisus, the 
exquisite fragrance of the citronella, the jessamine of the 
Azores, the verbena and musk-rose, and their sweetness, like 
a melody in perfume, falling on her senses stirred a vague 
tenderness in her heart. 

Graslin left Veronique under the spell of that emotion ; but 
almost nightly after Sauviat returned home the banker waited 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


2S 

till all Limoges was asleep, and then slunk along under the 
walls to the house where the dealer in old iron lived. He 
used to tap softly on the shutters, the dog did not bark, the 
old man came down and opened the door to his fellow-coun¬ 
tryman, and Graslin would spend a couple of hours in the 
brown room where Veronique sat, and Mother Sauviat would 
serve him up an Auvergnat supper. The uncouth lover never 
came without a bouquet for Veronique, rare flowers only to be 
procured in M. Grossetete’s hothouse, M. Grosset§te being the 
only person in Limoges in the secret of the marriage. The 
porter went after dark to bring the bouquet, which old Gros- 
setSte always gathered himself. 

During those two months Graslin went about fifty times to 
the house, and never without some handsome present, rings, 
a gold watch, a chain, a dressing-case, or the like; amazing 
lavishness on his part, which, however, is easily explained. 

Veronique would bring him almost the whole of her father’s 
fortune—she would have seven hundred and fifty thousand 
francs. The old man kept for himself an income of eight 
thousand francs, an old investment in the Funds, made when 
he was in imminent danger of losing his head on the scaffbld. 
In those days he had put sixty thousand francs in assignats 
(the half of his fortune) into government stock. It was 
Brezac who advised the investment, and dissuaded him after¬ 
wards when he thought of selling out; it was Brezac, too, 
who in the same emergency had been a faithful trustee for the 
rest of his fortune—the vast sum of seven hundred gold louis, 
with which Sauviat began to speculate as soon as he made 
good his escape from prison. In thirty years’ time each of 
those gold louis had been transmuted into a bill for a thousand 
francs, thanks partly to the interest on the assignats, partly to 
the money which fell in at the time of Champagnac’s death, 
partly to trading gains in the business, and the money stand¬ 
ing at compound interest in Br^zac’s concern. Brezac had 
done honestly by Sauviat, as Auvergnat does by Auvergnat. 


VERONIQUE. 29 

And so whenever Sauviat went to take a look at the front of 
Graslin’s great house— 

“ Veronique shall live in that palace ! ” he said to himself. 

He knew that there was not another girl in Limousin who 
would have seven hundred and fifty thousand francs paid down 
on her marriage-day, beside two hundred and fifty thousand 
of expectations. Graslin, the son-in-law of his choice, must 
therefore inevitably marry Veronique. So every evening Ver¬ 
onique received a bouquet, which daily made her little sitting- 
room bright with flowers, a bouquet carefully kept out of sight 
of the neighbors. She admired the beautiful jewels, the 
rubies, pearls and diamonds, the bracelets, dear to all daugh¬ 
ters of Eve, and thought herself less ugly thus adorned. She 
saw her mother happy over this marriage, and she herself had 
no standard of comparison; she had no idea what marriage 
meant, no conception of its duties; and finally she heard the 
curate of Saint-Etienne praising Graslin to her, in his solemn 
voice, telling her that this was an honorable man with whom she 
would lead an honorable life. So Veronique consented to receive 
M. Graslin’s attentions. In a lonely and monotonous life like 
hers, let a single person present himself day by day, and before 
long that person will not be indiflereilt; for either an aversion, 
confirmed by a deeper knowledge, will turn to hate, and the 
visitor’s presence will be intolerable; or custom stales (so to 
speak) the sight of physical defects, and then the mind begins 
to look for compensations. Curiosity busies itself with the 
face; from some cause or other the features light up, there is 
some fleeting gleam of beauty there; and at last the nature, 
hidden beneath the outward form, is discovered. In short, 
first impressions once overcome, the force with which the one 
soul is attracted to the other is but so much the stronger, 
because the discovery of the true nature of the other is all 
its own. So love invariably begins. Herein lies the secret 
of the passionate love which beautiful persons entertain for 
others who are not beautiful in appearance; affection, looking 


30 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


deeper than the outward form, sees the form no longer, but a 
soul, and thenceforward knows nothing else. Moreover, the 
beauty so necessary in a woman takes in a man such a strange 
character, that women’s opinions differ as much on the sub¬ 
ject of a man’s good looks as men about the beauty of a 
woman. 

After much meditation and many struggles with herself, 
V^ronique allowed the banns to be published, and all Limoges 
rang with the incredible news. Nobody knew the secret— 
the bride’s immense dowry. If that had been bruited abroad, 
Veronique might have chosen her husband, but perhaps even 
so would have been mistaken. It was a love-match on Gras- 
lin’s side, people averred. 

Upholsterers arrived from Paris to furnish the fine house. 
The banker was going to great expense over it, and nothing 
else was talked of in Limoges. People discussed the price of 
the chandeliers, the gilding of the drawing-room, the mythi¬ 
cal subjects of the timepieces ; and there were well-informed 
folk who could describe the flower-stands and the porcelain 
stoves, the luxurious novel contrivances. For instance, there 
was an aviary built above the ice-house in the garden of the 
Hotel Graslin ; all Limoges marveled at the rare birds in it— 
the paroquets, and Chinese pheasants, and strange water- 
fowl, there was no one who had not seen them. 

M. and Mme. Grossetdte, old people much looked up to in 
Limoges, called several times upon the Sauviats, Graslin 
accompanying them. Mme. Grosset^te, worthy woman, con¬ 
gratulated Veronique on the fortunate marriage she was to 
make ; so the Church, the family, and the world, together 
with every trifling circumstance, combined to bring this 
match about. 

In the month of April formal invitations were sent to all 
Graslin’s circle of acquaintance. At eleven o’clock one fine 
sunny morning a caleche and a brougham, drawn by Limousin 
horses in English harness (old Grossetdte had superintended 


VERONIQUE. 31 

his colleague’s stable), arrived before the poor little shop 
where the dealer in old iron lived; and the excited quarter 
beheld the bridegroom’s sometime partners and his two 
clerks. There was a prodigious sensation, the street was filled 
by the crowd eager to see the Sauviats’ daughter. The most 
celebrated hairdresser in Limoges had set the bride’s crown 
on her beautiful hair and arranged her veil of priceless Brus¬ 
sels lace ; but Veronique’s dress was of simple white muslin. 
A sufficiently imposing assembly of the most distinguished 
women of Limoges was present at the wedding in the cathe¬ 
dral ; the bishop himself, knowing the piety of the Sauviats, 
condescended to perform the marriage ceremony. People 
thought the bride a plain-looking girl. For the first time she 
entered her hotel, and went from surprise to surprise. A state 
dinner preceded the ball, to which Graslin had invited almost 
all Limoges. The dinner given to the bishop, the prefect, 
the president of the court of first instance, the public prose¬ 
cutor, the mayor, the general, and to Graslin’s sometime 
employers and their wives was a triumph for the bride, who, 
like all simple and unaffected people, proved unexpectedly 
charming. None of the married people would dance, so that 
V^ronique continued to do the honors of her house, and won 
the esteem and good graces of most of her new acquaint¬ 
ances ; asking old Grossetete, who had taken a great kindness 
for her, for information about her guests, and so avoiding 
blunders. During the evening the two retired bankers spread 
the news of the fortune, immense for Limousin, which the 
parents of the bride had given her. At nine o’clock the 
dealer in old iron went home to bed, leaving his wife to pre¬ 
side at the ceremony of undressing the bride. It was said in 
the town that Mme. Graslin was plain but well shaped. 

Old Sauviat sold his business and his house in the town, 
and bought a cottage on the left bank of the Vienne, between 
Limoges and Le Cluzeau, and ten minutes’ walk from the 
Faubourg Saint-Martial. Here he meant that he and his 


32 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


wife should end their days in peace. The two old people had 
rooms in Graslin’s hotel, and dined there once or twice a week 
with their daughter, whose walks usually took the direction 
of their house. 

The retired dealer in old iron had nothing to do, and nearly 
died of leisure. Luckily for him, his son-in-law found him 
some occupation. In 1823 the banker found himself with a 
porcelain factory on his hands. He had lent large sums to 
the manufacturers, which they were unable to repay, so he had 
taken over the business to recoup himself. In this concern 
he invested more capital, and by this means, and by his exten¬ 
sive business connections, made of it one of the largest facto¬ 
ries in Limoges; so that when he sold it in three years after 
he took it over, he made a large profit on the transaction. 
He made his tather-in-law the manager of this factory, situated 
in the very same quarter of Saint-Martial where his house 
stood ; and in spite of Sauviat’s seventy-two years, he had 
done not a little in bringing about the prosperity of a busi¬ 
ness in which he grew quite young again. The plan had its 
advantages likewise for Graslin; but for old Sauviat, who 
threw himself heart and soul into the porcelain factory, he 
would perhaps have been obliged to take a clerk into part¬ 
nership and lose part of the profits, which he now received 
in full; but as it was, he could look after his own affairs in 
the town, and feel his mind at ease as to the capital invested in 
the porcelain works. 

In 1827 Sauviat met with an accident, which ended in his 
death. He was busy with the stock-taking, when he stumbled 
over one of the crates in which the china was packed, grazing 
his leg slightly. He took no care of himself, and mortifica¬ 
tion set in ; they talked of amputation, but he would not hear 
of losing his leg, and so he died. His widow made over about 
two hundred and fifty thousand francs, the amount of Sauviat’s 
estate, to her daughter and son-in-law, Graslin undertaking to 
pay her two hundred francs a month, an amount amply 


V&RONIQUE. 


33 


sufficient for her needs. She persisted in living on without 
a servant in the little cottage; keeping her point with the 
obstinacy of old age and in spite of her daughter’s entreat¬ 
ies j but, on the other hand, she went almost every day to 
the Hotel Graslin, and Veronique’s walks, as heretofore, 
usually ended at her mother’s house. There was a charm¬ 
ing view from the windows of the river and the little island 
in the Vienne, which Veronique had loved in the old days, 
and called her Isle of France. 

The story of the Sauviats has been anticipated partly to save 
interruption to the other story of the Graslins’ household, partly 
because it serves to explain some of the reasons of the retired 
life which Veronique Graslin led. The old mother foresaw 
how much her child might one day be made to suffer through 
Graslin’s avarice ; for long she held out, and refused to give 
up the rest of her fortune, and only gave way when Veron¬ 
ique insisted upon it. Veronique was incapable of imagin¬ 
ing circumstances in which a wife desires to have the control 
of her property, and acted upon a generous impulse; in this 
way she meant to thank Graslin for giving her back her 
liberty. 

The unaccustomed splendors of Graslin’s marriage had been 
totally at variance with his habits and nature. The great 
capitalist’s ideas were very narrow. Veronique had had no 
opportunity of gauging the man with whom she must spend the 
rest of her life. During those fifty-five evening visits Graslin 
had shown but one side of his character—the man of business, 
the undaunted worker who planned and carried out large 
undertakings, the capitalist who looked at public affairs with 
a view to their probable effect on the bank-rate and oppor¬ 
tunities of money-making. And, under the influence of his 
father-in-law’s million, Graslin had behaved generously in 
those days, though even then his lavish expenditure was 
made to gain his own ends; he was drawn into expense in 
the springtide days of his marriage partly by the possession 


34 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


of the great house, which he called his Folly,the house 
still called the Hotel Graslin in Limoges. 

As he had the horses, the caleche, and brougham, it was 
natural to make use of them to pay a round of visits on his 
marriage, and to go to the dinner-parties and dances given in 
honor of the bride by official dignitaries and wealthy houses. 
Acting on the impulses which carried him out of his ordinary 
sphere, Graslin was ‘‘at home” to callers one day in the 
week, and sent to Paris for a cook. For about a year, indeed, 
he led the ordinary life of a man who has seventeen hundred 
thousand francs of his own, and can command a capital of 
three millions. He had come to be the most conspicuous 
personage in Limoges. During that year he generously al¬ 
lowed Mme. Graslin twenty-five twenty-franc pieces every 
month. 

Veronique on her marriage had become a person of great 
interest to the rank and fashion of Limoges; she was a kind 
of godsend to the idle curiosity which finds such meagre suste¬ 
nance in the provinces. Veronique who had so suddenly made 
her appearance was a phenomenon, tlie more closely scruti¬ 
nized on that account ; but she always maintained the simple 
and unaffected attitude of an onlooker who watches manners 
and usages unknown to her, and seeks to conform to them. 
From the first she had been pronounced to have a good figure 
and a plain face, and now it was decided that she was good- 
natured, but stupid. She was learning so many things at once, 
she had so much to see and to hear, that her manner and talk 
gave some color to this accusation. A sort of torpor, more¬ 
over, had stolen over her which might well be mistaken for 
stupidity. Marriage, that “difficult profession” of wifehood, 
as she called it, in which the Church, the Code, and her own 
mother bade her practice the most complete resignation and 
perfect obedience, under pain of breaking all laws human and 
divine, and bringing about irreparable evils ; marriage had 
plunged her into a bewilderment which grew to the pitch of 


VERONIQUE. 


35 


vertigo and delirium. While she sat silent and reserved, she 
heard her own thoughts as plainly as the voices about her. 
For her “existence” had come to be extremely “difficult,” 
to use the phrase of the dying Fontenelle, and ever more 
increasingly, till she grew frightened, she was afraid of her¬ 
self. Nature recoiled from the orders of the soul; the body 
rebelled against the will. The poor snared creature wept on 
the bosom of the great Mother of the sorrowful and afflicted ; 
she betook herself to the Church, she redoubled her fervor, 
she confided to her director the temptations which assailed 
her, she poured out her soul in prayer. Never at any time in 
her life did she fulfill her religious duties so zealously. The 
tempest of despair which filled her when she knew that she 
did not love her husband flung her at the foot of the altar, 
where divine comforting voices spoke to her of patience. 
And she was patient and sweet, living in hope of the joys of 
motherhood. 

“Did you see Mme. Graslin this morning?” the women 
asked among themselves. “ Marriage does not agree with 
her; she looked quite ghastly.” 

“ Yes; but would you have given a daughter of yours to a 
man like M. Graslin ? Of course, if you marry such a mon¬ 
ster, you suffer for it.” 

As soon as Graslin was fairly married, all the mothers who 
had assiduously hunted him for the past ten years directed 
spiteful speeches at him. Veronique grew thin, and became 
plain in good earnest. Her eyes were heavy, her features 
coarsened, she looked shamefaced and embarrassed, and wore 
the dreary, chilling expression so repellent in bigoted devo¬ 
tees. A grayish tint overspread her complexion. She dragged 
herself languidly about during the first year of her marriage, 
usually the heyday of a woman’s life. Before very long she 
sought for distraction in books, making use of her privilege as 
a rnarried woman to read everything. She read Scott’s novels, 
Byron’s poems, the works of Schiller and Goethe, literature 


36 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


ancient and modern. She learned to ride, to dance, and 
draw. She made sepia drawings and sketches in water-color, 
eager to learn every device which women use to while away 
the tedium of solitary hours; in short, that second education 
which a woman nearly always undertakes for a man’s sake and 
with his guidance, she undertook alone and for herself. 

In the loftiness of a nature frank and free, brought up, as 
it were, in the desert, but fortified by religion, there was a 
wild grandeur, cravings which found no satisfaction in the 
provincial society in which she moved. All the books de¬ 
scribed love; she looked up from her books on life, and 
found no traces of passion there. Love lay dormant in her 
heart like the germs which wait for the sun. Through a pro¬ 
found melancholy, caused by constant brooding over herself, 
she came by dim and winding ways back to the last bright 
dreams of her girlhood. She dwelt more than once on the 
old romantic imaginings, and became the heroine and the 
theatre of the drama. Once again she saw the island bathed 
in light, full of blossom and sweet scents, and all things grate¬ 
ful to her soul. 

Not seldom her sad eyes wandered over her rooms with 
searching curiosity; the men she saw were all like Graslin ; 
she watched them closely, and seemed to turn questioningly 
from them to their wives; but on the women’s faces she saw 
no sign of her own secret trouble, and sadly and wearily she 
returned to her starting-point, uneasy about herself. Her 
highest thoughts met with a response in the books which she 
read of a morning, their wit pleased her; but in the evening 
she heard nothing but commonplace thoughts, which no one 
attempted to disguise by giving a witty turn to them; the talk 
around her was vapid and empty, or ran upon gossip and local 
news, which had no interest for her. She wondered some¬ 
times at the warmth of discussions in which there was no 
question of sentiment, for her the very core of life. She was 
often seen gazing before her with fixed, wide eyes, thinking. 


VERONIQUE. 


37 


doubtless, of hours which she had spent, while still a girl 
ignorant of life, in the room where everything had been in 
keeping with her fancies, and now laid in ruins, like Veron- 
ique’s own existence. She shrank in pain from the thought of 
being drawn into the eddy of petty cares and interests like 
the other women among whom she was forced to live; her ill- 
concealed disdain of the littleness of her lot, visible upon her 
lips and brow, was taken for upstart insolence. 

Mme. Graslin saw the coolness upon all faces, and felt a 
certain bitter tone in the talk. She did not understand the 
reason, for as yet she had not made a friend sufficiently inti¬ 
mate to enlighten or counsel her. Injustice, under which 
small natures chafe, compels loftier souls to return within 
themselves, and induces in them a kind of humility. Veron- 
ique blamed herself, and tried to discover where the fault lay. 
She tried to be gracious, she was pronounced to be insincere; 
she redoubled her kindliness, and was said to be a hypocrite 
(her devotion giving color to the slander) ; she was lavish of 
hospitality, and gave dinners and dances, and was accused of 
pride. All Mme. Graslin’s efforts were unsuccessful. She 
was misjudged and repulsed by the petty querulous pride of 
provincial coteries, where susceptibilities are always upon the 
watch for offenses; she went no more into society, and lived 
in the strictest retirement. The love in her heart turned to 
the Church. The great spirit in its feeble house of flesh saw 
in the manifold behests of Catholicism but so many stones set 
by the brink of the precipices of life, raised there by chari¬ 
table hands to prop human weakness by the way. So every 
least religious observance was practiced with the most punctil¬ 
ious care. 

Upon this, the Liberal party added Mme. Graslin’s name 
to the list of bigots in the town. She was classed among the 
Ultras, and party spirit strengthened the various grudges 
which V6ronique had innocently stored up against herself, 
with its periodical exacerbations. But as she had nothing to 


38 


THE COUNTRY PERSON. 


lose by this ostracism, she went no more into society, and be¬ 
took herself to her books, with the infinite resources which 
they opened to her. She thought over her reading, she 
compared methods, she increased the amount of her actual 
knowledge and her power of acquiring it, and by so doing 
opened the gateways of her mind to curiosity. 

It was at this period of close and persistent study, while 
religion supported her, that she gained a friend in M. Gros- 
setdte, an old man whose real ability had not grown so rusty 
in the course of a life in a country town but that contact with 
a keen intelligence could still draw a few sparks from it. The 
kind soul was deeply interested in Vdronique, who, in return 
for the mild warmth of the mellowed affection which age alone 
can give, put forth all the treasures of her soul; for him the 
splendid powers cultivated in secret first blossomed forth. 

A fragment of a letter written at this time to M. GrossetSte 
will describe the mental condition of a woman who one day 
should give proof of a firm temper and lofty nature: 

The flowers which you sent to me for the dance were very 
lovely, yet they suggested painful thoughts. The sight of that 
beauty, gathered by you to decorate a festival, and to fade on 
my breast and in my hair, made me think of other flowers 
born to die unseen in your woods, to shed sweet scent that no 
one breathes. Then I asked myself why I was dancing, why 
I had decked myself with flowers, just as I ask God why I 
am here in the world. You see, my friend, that in everything 
there liirks a snare for the unhappy, just as the drollest trifles 
bring the sick back to their own sufferings. That is the 
worst of some troubles: they press upon us so constantly that 
they shape themselves into an idea which is ever present in 
our minds. An ever-present trouble ought surely to be a 
hallowed thought. You love flowers for their own sake ; I 
love them as I love beautiful music. As I once told you, 
the secret of a host of things is hidden from me- You, 



VERONIQUE. 


39 


my old friend, for instance, have a passion for gardening. 
When you come back to town, teach me to share in this taste 
of yours; send me with a light footstep to my hothouse to feel 
the interest which you take in watching your plants grow. You 
seem to me to live and blossom with them, to take a delight in 
them, as in something of your own creation ; to discover new 
colors, novel splendors, which come forth under your eyes, 
the result of your labors. I feel that the emptiness of my life 
is breaking my heart. For me, my hothouse is full of pining 
souls. The distress which I force myself to relieve saddens 
my very soul. I find some young mother without linen for 
her newborn babe, some old man starving, I make their 
troubles mine, and even when I have helped them, the feel¬ 
ings aroused in me by the sight of misery relieved are not 
enough to satisfy my soul. Oh! my friend, I feel that I have 
great powers asserting themselves in me, powers of doing evil, 
it may be, which nothing can crush—powers that the hardest 
commandments of religion cannot humble. When I go to see 
my mother, when I am quite alone among the fields, I feel 
that I must cry aloud, and I cry. My body is the prison in 
which one of the evil genii has pent up some moaning crea¬ 
ture, until the mysterious word shall be uttered which shatters 
the cramping cell. But this comparison is not just. In my 
case it should be reversed. It is the body which is a prisoner, 
if I may make use of the expression. Does not religion 
occupy my soul ? And the treasures gained by reading are 
constant food for the mind. Why do I long for any change, 
even if it comes as suffering—for any break in the enervating 
peace of my lot? Unless I find some sentiment to uphold 
me, some strong interest to cultivate, I feel that I shall drift 
towards the abyss where every idea grows hazy and meaning¬ 
less, where character is enervated, where the springs of one’s 
being grow slack and inert, where I shall be no longer the 
woman nature intended me to be. That is what my cries 
mean- But you will not cease to send flowers to me 



40 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


because of this outcry of mine? Your friendship has been 
so sweet and pleasant a thing, that it has reconciled me 
with myself for several months. Yes, I feel happy when I 
think that you sometimes throw a friendly glance over the 
blossoming desert-place, my inner self; that the wanderer, 
half-dead after her flight on the fiery steed of a dream, will 
meet with a kind word of greeting from you on her return.” 

Three years after Veronique’s marriage, it occurred to 
Graslin that his wife never used the horses, and, a good op¬ 
portunity offering itself, he sold them. The carriages were 
sold at the same time, the coachman was dismissed, and the 
cook from Paris transferred to the bishop’s establishment. A 
woman-servant took his place. Graslin ceased to give his 
wife an allowance, saying that he would pay all the bills. He 
was the happiest man in the world when he met with no op¬ 
position' from the wife who had brought hini a million. There 
was not much merit, it is true, in Mme. Graslin’s self-denial. 
She knew nothing of money, she had been brought up in 
ignorance of it as an indispensable element in life. Graslin 
found the sums which he had given to her lying in a corner 
of her desk; scarcely any of it had been spent. Veronique 
gave to the poor, her trousseau had been so large that as yet 
she had had scarcely any expenses for dress. Graslin praised 
Veronique to all Limoges as the pattern of wives. 

The splendor of the furniture gave him pangs, so he had it 
all shrouded in covers. His wife’s bedroom, boudoir, and 
dressing-room alone escaped this dispensation, an economical 
measure which economized nothing, for the wear and tear to 
the furniture is the same, covers or no covers. 

He next took up his abode on the ground floor, where the 
counting-house and office had been established, so he began 
his old life again, and was as keen in pursuit of gain as before. 
The Auvergnat banker thought himself a model husband be¬ 
cause he breakfasted and dined with his wife, who carefully 


VERONIQUE. 


41 


ordered the meals for him; but he was so extremely unpunc¬ 
tual, that he came in at the proper hour scarce ten times a 
month ; and though, out of thoughtfulness, he asked her never 
to wait for him, Veronique always stayed to carve for him; 
she wanted to fulfill her wifely duties in some one visible 
manner. His marriage had not been a matter to which the 
banker gave much thought; his wife represented the sum of 
seven hundred and fifty thousand francs; he had not discov¬ 
ered that that wife shrank from him. Gradually he had left 
Mine. Graslin to herself, and became absorbed in business; 
and when he took it into his head to have a bed put up for 
himself in a room next to his private office, Veronique saw that 
his wishes were carried out at once. 

So after three years of marriage this ill-assorted couple went 
their separate ways as before, and felt glad to return to them. 
The capitalist, owner now of eighteen hundred thousand 
francs, returned to his occupation of money-making with all 
the more zest after the brief interval. His two clerks and the 
office-boy were somewhat better lodged and a little better fed 
—that was all the difference between the past and the present. 
His wife had a cook and a waiting-maid (the two servants 
could not well be dispensed with), and no calls were made on 
Graslin’s purse except for strict necessaries. 

And Veronique was happy in the turn things had taken; 
she saw in the banker’s satisfaction a compensation for a sep¬ 
aration for which she had never asked ; it was impossible 
that Graslin should shrink from her as she shrank from him. 
She was half-glad, half-sorry of this secret divorce; she had 
looked forward to motherhood, which should bring a new 
interest into her life; but in spite of their mutual resig¬ 
nation, there was no child of the marriage as yet in 1828. 

So Mme. Graslin, envied by all Limoges, led as lonely 
a life in her splendid home as formerly in her father’s 
hovel; but the hopes and the childish joys of inexj^erience 
were gone. She lived in the ruins of her “castles in Spain, 


42 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


enlightened by sad experience, sustained by a devout faith, 
busying herself for the poor of the district, whom she loaded 
with kindnesses. She made baby linen for them; she gave 
sheets and bedding to those who lay on straw; she went 
everywhere with her maid—a good Auvergnate whom her 
mother found for her. This girl attached herself body and 
soul to her mistress, and became a charitable spy for her, 
whose mission it was to find out trouble to soothe and distress 
to relieve. This life of busy benevolence and of punctilious 
performance of the duties enjoined by the Church was a hidden 
life, only known by the cures of the town who directed it, for 
V6ronique took their counsel in all that she did, so that the 
money intended for the deserving poor should not be squan¬ 
dered by vice. 

During these years V^ronique found another friendship 
quite as precious to her and as warm as her friendship with old 
Grossetdte. She became one of the flock of the Abbe Du- 
theil, one of the vicars-general of the diocese. This priest 
belonged to the small minority among the French clergy who 
lean towards concession, who would fain associate the Church 
with the popular cause. By putting evangelical principles in 
practice, the Church should gain her old ascendency over the 
people, whom she could then bind to the Monarchy. But 
the Abb6 Dutheil’s merits were unrecognized, and he was 
persecuted. Perhaps he had seen that it was hopeless to 
attempt to enlighten the Court of Rome and the clerical 
party; perhaps he had sacrificed his convictions at the bid¬ 
ding of his superiors; at any rate, he dwelt within the limits 
of the strictest orthodoxy, knowing the while that the mere 
expression of his convictions would close his way to a bish¬ 
opric. A great and Christian humility, blended with a lofty 
character, distinguished this eminent churchman. He had 
neither pride nor ambition, and stayed at his post, doing his 
duty in the midst of peril. The Liberal party in the town, 
who knew nothing of his motives, quoted his opinions in 


V^RONIQUE. 


43 


support of their own, and reckoned him as a patriot,*' a 
word which means “ a revolutionaire ” for good Catholics. 
He was beloved by those below him, who did not dare to 
praise his worth; dreaded by his equals, who watched him 
narrowly; and a thorn in the side of his bishop. He was 
not exactly persecuted, his learning and virtues were too well 
known ; it was impossible to find fault with him freely, though 
he criticised the blunders in policy by which the Throne and 
the Church alternately compromised each other, and pointed 
out the inevitable results; like poor Cassandra, he was reviled 
by his own party before and after the fall which he predicted. 
Nothing short of a revolution was likely to shake the Abbe 
Dutheil from his place; he was a foundation-stone in the 
Church, an unseen block of granite on which everything else 
rests. His utility was recognized, and—he was left in his 
place, like most of the real power of which mediocrity is 
jealous and afraid. If, like the Abbe de Lamennais, he had 
taken up the pen, he would probably have shared his fate; at 
him, too, the thunderbolts of Rome would have been 
launched. 

In person the Abbe Dutheil was commanding. Something 
in his appearance spoke of a soul so profound that the surface 
is always calm and smooth. His height and spare frame did 
not mar the general effect of the outlines of his figure, which 
vaguely recalled those forms which Spanish painters loved 
best to paint for great monastic thinkers and dreamers—forms 
which Thorvaldsen in our own time has selected for his 
apostles. His face, with the long, almost austere lines in it, 
which bore out the impression made by the straight folds of 
his garments, possessed the same charm which the sculptors 
of the middle ages discovered and recorded in the mystic 
figures about the doorways of their churches. His grave 
thoughts, grave words, and grave tones were all in keeping, 
and the expression of the Abba’s personality. At the first 
sight of the dark eyes, which austerity had surrounded with 


44 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


hollow shadowy circles; the forehead, yellowed like old 
marble; the bony outlines of the head and hands, no one 
could have expected to hear any voice but his, or any teaching 
but that which fell from his lips. It was this purely physical 
grandeur, in keeping with the moral grandeur of his nature, 
that gave him a certain seeming haughtiness and aloofness, 
belied, it is true, by his humility and his talk, yet unpre¬ 
possessing in the first instance. In a higher position these 
qualities would have been advantages which would have 
enabled him to gain a necessary ascendency over the crowd 
—an ascendency which it is quick to feel and to recognize; 
but he was a subordinate, and a man’s superiors never pardon 
him for possessing the natural insignia of power, the majesty 
so highly valued in an older time, and often so signally 
lacking in modern upholders of authority. 

His colleague, the Abbe de Grancour, the other vicar- 
general of the diocese, a blue-eyed, stout little man with a 
florid complexion, worked willingly enough with the Abbe 
Dutheil, albeit their opinions were diametrically opposed; a 
curious phenomenon, which only a wily courtier will regard 
as a natural thing; but, at the same time, the Abbe de Gran¬ 
cour was very careful not to commit himself in any way 
which might cost him the favor of his bishop ; the little man 
would have sacrificed anything (even convictions) to stand 
well in that quarter. He had a sincere belief in his colleague, 
he recognized his ability ; in private he admitted his doctrines, 
while he condemned them in public; for men of his kind 
are attracted to a powerful character, while they fear and hate 
the superiority whose society they cultivate. “ He would put 
his arms round my neck while he condemned me,” said the 
Abb6 Dutheil. The Abb6 de Grancour had neither friends 
nor enemies, and was likely to die a vicar-general. He gave 
out that he was drawn to Veronique’s house by a wish to give 
a woman so benevolent and so devout the benefit of his 
counsels, and the bishop signified his approval; but, in 


VERONIQUE. 


45 


reality, he was only too delighted to spend an evening now 
and then in this way with the Abbe Dutheil. 

From this time forward both priests became pretty constant 
visitors in Veronique’s house; they used to bring her a sort 
of general report of any distress in the district, and talk over 
the best means of benefiting the poor morally and materially; 
but year by year M. Graslin drew the purse-strings closer and 
closer; for, in spite of ingenious excuses devised by his wife 
and Aline the maid, he suspected that all the money was not 
required for expenses of dress and housekeeping. He grew 
angry at last when he reckoned up the amount which his wife 
gave away. He himself would go through the bills with the 
cook, he went minutely into the details of their expenditure, 
and showed himself the great administrator that he was by 
demonstrating conclusively from his own experience that it 
was possible to live in luxury on three thousand francs per 
annum. Whereupon he compounded the matter with his 
wife by allowing her a hundred francs a month, to be duly 
accounted for, pluming himself on the royal bounty of the 
grant. The garden, now handed over to him, was “done 
up“ of a Sunday by the porter, who had a liking for garden¬ 
ing. After the gardener was dismissed, the conservatory was 
turned to account as a warehouse, where Graslin deposited the 
goods left with him as security for small loans. The birds in 
the aviary above the ice-house were left to starve, to save the 
expense of feeding them ; and when at length a winter passed 
without a single frost, he took that opportunity of declining 
to pay for ice any longer. By the year 1828 every article of 
luxury was curtailed, and parsimony reigned undisturbed in 
the Hotel Graslin. 

During the first three years after Graslin’s marriage, with 
his wife at hand to make him follow out the doctor’s instruc¬ 
tions, his complexion had somewhat improved; now it 
inflamed again, and became redder and more florid than in 
the past. So largely, at the same time, did his business 


46 


THE COUNTRY Parson. 


increase, that the porter was promoted to be a clerk (as his 
master had been before him), and another Auvergnat had to 
be found to do the odd jobs of the Hotel Graslin. 

After four years of married life the woman who had so 
much wealth had not three francs to call her own. To the 
niggardliness of her parents succeeded the no less niggardly 
dispensation of her husband; and Mme. Graslin, whose 
benevolent impulses were checked, felt the need of money 
for the first time. 

In the beginning of the year 1828 Veronique had recovered 
the bloom of health which had lent such beauty to the inno¬ 
cent girl who used to sit at the window in the old house in 
the Rue de la Cit6. She had read widely since those days; 
she had learned to think and to express her thoughts; the 
habit of forming accurate judgments had lent profundity to 
her features. The little details of social life had become 
familiar to her, she wore a fashionable toilet with the most 
perfect ease and grace. If chance brought her into a draw¬ 
ing-room at this time, she found, not without surprise, that 
she was received with something like respectful esteem; this 
way of regarding her, like her reception, was due to the two 
vicars-general and old Grossetdte. The bishop and one or 
two influential people, hearing of V^ronique’s unwearying 
benevolence, had talked about this fair life hidden from the 
world, this violet perfumed with virtues, this blossom of un¬ 
feigned piety. So, all unknown to Mme. Graslin, a revolu¬ 
tion had been wrought in her favor ; one of those reactions 
so much the more lasting and sure because they are slowly 
affected. With this right-about-face in opinion Veronique 
became a power in the land. Her drawing-room was the 
resort of the luminaries of Limoges; the practical change 
was brought about by this means: 

The young Vicomte de Granville came to the town at the 
end of that year, preceded by the ready-made reputation 
which awaits a Parisian on his arrival in the provinces. He 


VERONIQUE. 47 

had been appointed deputy public prosecutor to the Court 
of Limoges. A few days after his arrival he said, in answer 
to a sufficiently silly question, that Mme. Graslin was the 
cleverest, most amiable, and most distinguished woman in 
the city, and this at the prefect’s At Home,” and before a 
whole room full of people. 

“ And the most beautiful as well, perhaps ? ” suggested the 
receiver-general’s wife. 

“ There I do not venture to agree with you,” he answered; 
‘‘ when you are present I am unable to decide. Mme. Gras- 
lin’s beauty is not of a kind which should inspire jealousy in 
you, she never appears in broad daylight. Mme. Graslin is 
only beautiful for those whom she loves ; you are beautiful for 
all eyes. If Mme. Graslin is deeply stirred, her face is trans¬ 
formed by its expression. It is like a landscape, dreary in 
winter, glorious in summer. Most people only see it in winter; 
but if you watch her while she talks with her friends on some 
literary or philosophical subject, or upon some religious ques¬ 
tion which interests her, her face lights up, and suddenly she 
becomes another woman, a woman of wonderful beauty.” 

This declaration, a recognition of the same beautiful trans¬ 
figuration which Veronique’s face underwent as she returned 
to her place from the communion table, made a sensation in 
Limoges, for the new substitute (destined, it was said, to be 
attorney-general one day) was the hero of the hour. In 
every country town a man a little above the ordinary level 
becomes for a shorter or longer time the subject of a craze, a 
sham enthusiasm to which the idol of the moment falls a 
victim. To these freaks of the provincial drawing-room we 
owe the local genius and the person who suffers from the 
chronic complaint of unappreciated superiority. Sometimes 
it is native talent which women discover and bring into fashion, 
but more frequently it is some outsider \ and for once, in the 
case of the Vicomte de Granville, the homage was paid to 
genuine ability. 


48 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


The Parisian found that Mine. Graslih was the only woman 
with whom he could exchange ideas or carry on a sustained 
and varied conversation ; and a few months after his arrival, 
as the charm of her talk and manner gained upon him, he 
suggested to some of the prominent men in the town, and to 
the Abb6 Dutheil among them, that they might make their 
party at whist of an evening in Mme. Graslin’s drawing-room. 
So Veronique was at home to her friends for five nights in the 
week (two days she wished to keep free, she said, for her own 
concerns); and when the cleverest men in the town gathered 
about Mme. Graslin, others were not sorry to take brevet rank 
as wits by spending their evenings in her society. Veronique 
received the two or three distinguished military men stationed 
in the town or on the garrison staff. The entire freedom of dis¬ 
cussion enjoyed by her visitors, the absolute discretion required 
of them, tacitly and by the adoption of the manners of the 
best society, combined to make Veronique exclusive and very 
slow to admit those who courted the honor of her society to 
her circle. Other women saw not without jealousy that the 
cleverest and pleasantest men gathered round Mme. Graslin, 
and her power was the more widely felt in Limoges because 
she was exclusive. The four or five women whom she accepted 
were strangers to the district, who had accompanied their 
husbands from Paris, and looked on provincial tittle-tattle 
with disgust. If some one chanced to call who did not belong 
to the inner cenacle, the conversation underwent an immediate 
change, and with one accord all present spoke of indifferent 
things. 

So the Hotel Graslin became a sort of oasis in the desert 
where a chosen few sought relief in each other’s society from 
the tedium of provincial life, a house where officials might 
discuss politics and speak their minds without fear of their 
opinions being reported, where all things worthy of mockery 
were fair game for wit and laughter, where every one laid aside 
his professional uniform to give his natural character free play. 


VERONJQUE. 


49 


In the beginning of that year 1828, Mme. Graslin, whose 
girlhood had been spent in the most complete obscurity, who 
had been pronounced to be plain and stupid and a complete 
nullity, was now looked upon as the most important person 
in the town, and the most conspicuous woman in society. 
No one called upon her in the morning, for her benevolence 
and her punctuality in the performance of her duties of relig¬ 
ion were well known. She almost invariably went to the first 
mass, returning in time for her husband’s early breakfast. He 
was the most unpunctual of men, but she always sat with him, 
for Graslin had learned to expect this little attention from his 
wife. As for Graslin, he never let slip an opportunity of 
praising her; he thought her perfection. She never asked 
him for money; he was free to pile up silver crown on silver 
crown, and to expand his field of operations. He had opened 
an account with the firm of Brezac; he had set sail upon a 
commercial sea, and the horizon was gradually widening out 
before him ; his over-stimulated interest, intent upon the great 
events of the green table called very superficially Speculation, 
kept him perpetually in the cold, frenzied intoxication of the 
gambler. 

During this happy year, and indeed until the beginning 
of the year 1829, Mme. Graslin’s friends watched a strange 
change passing in her, under their eyes; her beauty became 
really extraordinary, but the reasons of the change were never 
discovered. Her eyes seemed to be bathed in a soft liquid 
light, full of tenderness, the blue iris widened like an expand¬ 
ing flower as the dark pupils contracted. Memories and happy 
thoughts seemed to light up her brow, which grew whiter, 
like some ridge of snow in the dawn, her features seemed to 
regain their purity of outline in some refining fire within. 
Her face lost the feverish brown color which threatens inflam¬ 
mation of the liver, the malady of vigorous temperaments of 
troubled minds and thwarted affections. Her temples grew 
adorably fresh and youthful. Frequently her friends saw 
4 


60 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


glimpses of the divinely fair face which a Raphael might have 
painted, the face which disease had covered with an ugly film, 
such as time spreads over the canvas of the great master. 
Her hands looked whiter, there was a delicate fulness in the 
rounded curves of her shoulders, and her quick dainty move¬ 
ments displayed to the very full the lissome grace of her 
form. 

The women said that she was in love with M. de Granville, 
who, for that matter, paid assiduous court to her, though 
Veronique raised between them the barriers of a pious resist¬ 
ance. The deputy public prosecutor professed a respectful 
admiration for her which did not impose upon frequenters of 
her house. Clearer-sighted observers attributed to a different 
cause this change, which made Veronique still more charming 
to her friends. Any woman, however devout, could not but 
feel in her inmost soul that it was sweet to be so courted, to 
know the satisfaction of living in a congenial atmosphere, the 
delight of exchanging ideas (so great a relief in a tedious life), 
the pleasure of the society of well-read and agreeable men, 
and of sincere friendships, which grew day by day. It needed, 
perhaps, an observer still more profound, more acute, or more 
suspicious than any of those who came to the Hotel Graslin to 
divine the untamed greatness, the strength of the woman of 
the people pent up in the depths of Veronique’s nature. Now 
and again they might surprise her in a torpid mood, overcast 
by gloomy or merely pensive musings, but all her friends 
knew that she carried many troubles in her heart; that, doubt¬ 
less, in the morning she had been initiated into many sorrows, 
that she penetrated into dark places where vice is appalling 
by reason of its unblushing front. Not seldom, indeed, the 
Vicomte, soon promoted to be advocate-general, scolded her 
for some piece of blind benevolence discovered by him in the 
course of his investigations. Justice complained that Charity 
had paved the way to the police court. 

Do you want money for some of your poor people? ” old 


1 






K 


« I 






r- ' 





•'V 




>;C 


^T' 

f. 



'♦'•'iililsr 


r 

5 ’ , \ ^ 

. * 

* f # 

'4 H .' '- <■» 


" ■■ ^■ 




I i 




,S' 





ti^ 

f. 


r. ’ . i\j'' ^ 




W 






<• ‘h.. 




_• .• 


*r 




lW- 

i ^ 



''t? 




4 * 






V/ >»%. 




<% 


U 


ri 




M.-: 


i 


f • 


0 


4‘i 


^ ■ 



y\4y ii^.:^ -AuoH '•^*^ HO‘i vwt»w\ '■. wA J# o6 


t < ^*% ‘*' > • 

" ^ * «.• ■ 

^n.vJ 


.r V 


^1 

i ' ' 

• - ‘ ki 



I _ « #'...- <»r* '?• 




Do YOU WANT MONEY FOR SOME OF YOUR POOR PEOPLE?*' 








































>7 




» •r 



■ 






«. 



1*: 





; •'** .* 







T , 


' . , 


» I, 



k.-’ 





<f 


^ur^- 




■'' .r f 




- ’"fiLl '■ 


n- : ^yr;1,i; j 




^ ^» • :. -V • -*41 1 


,A 




p * <. 





/•V 



. I • • 


^ * 


> . 


'*!*■ 

‘^'J ^ 



-V-Vfr, 

► * V : 4* - •' 

1 • . 

p . ♦ 

^ >• '^_ '.^ 



/ ' . t 

r . ^. 


f/ v t * ^ 3^ 

. V ' ■ 

*B 4 


vA] 




- 

^.r *. 




<v 


j •..( ot' t * < * , 

f 

: >' '* . «4«. f- J 

? t 

■ 





iSii. #Ai! 








v£ronique. 


61 


GrossetSte had asked on this, as he took her hand in his. I 
will share the guilt of your benefactions.” 

*‘It is impossible to make everybody rich,” she answered, 
heaving a sigh. 

An event occurred at the beginning of this year which was 
to change the whole current of Veronique’s inner life, as well 
as the wonderful expression of her face, which henceforward 
became a portrait infinitely more interesting to a painter’s 
eyes. 

Graslin grew rather fidgety about his health, and to his 
wife’s great despair left his ground-floor quarters and returned 
to her apartment to be tended. Soon afterwards Mme. Gras- 
lin’s condition became a matter of town gossip; she was about 
to become a mother. Her evident sadness, mingled with joy, 
filled her friends’ thoughts; they then divined that, in spite 
of her virtues, she was happiest when she lived apart from her 
husband. Perhaps she had had hopes for better things since 
the day when the Vicomte de Granville had declined to marry 
the richest heiress in Limousin, and still continued to pay 
court to her. Ever since that event the profound politicians 
who exercise the censorship of sentiments, and settle other 
people’s business in the intervals of whist, had suspected the 
lawyer and young Mme. Graslin of basing hopes of their own 
on the banker’s failing health—hopes which were brought to 
nothing by this unexpected development. It was a time in 
Veronique’s life when deep distress of mind was added to the 
apprehensions of a first confinement, always more perilous, it 
is said, when a woman is past her first youth, but all through 
those days her friends showed themselves more thoughtful for 
her; there was not one of them but made her feel in innumer¬ 
able small ways what warmth there was in these friendships of 
hers, and how solid they had become. 


II. 


TASCHERON. 

It was in the same year that Limoges witnessed the terrible 
spectacle and strange tragedy of the Tascheron case, in which 
the young Vicomte de Granville displayed the talents which 
procured him the appointment of public prosecutor at a later 
day. 

An old man living in a lonely house on the outskirts of the 
Faubourg Saint-Etienne was murdered. A large orchard 
isolates the dwelling on the side of the town, on the other there 
is a pleasure garden, with a row of unused hothouses at the 
bottom of it; then follow the open fields. The bank of the 
Vienne in this place rises up very steeply from the river, the 
little front garden slopes down to this embankment, and is 
bounded by a low wall surmounted by an open fence. 
Square stone posts are set along it at even distances, but the 
painted wooden railings are there more by way of ornament 
than as a protection to the property. 

The old man, Pingret by name, a notorious miser, lived 
quite alone save for a servant, a countrywoman whom he 
employed in the garden. He trained his espaliers and pruned 
his fruit trees himself, gathering his crops and selling them 
in the town, and excelled in growing early vegetables for the 
market. The old man’s niece and sole heiress, who had 
married a M. des Vanneaulx, a man of small independent 
means, and lived in Limoges, had many a time implored her 
uncle to keep a man as protection to the place, pointing 
out to him that he would be able to grow more garden 
produce in several borders planted with standard fruit trees 
beneath which he now sowed millet and the like; but it was 
of no use, the old man would not hear of it. This contra¬ 
diction in a miser gave rise to all sorts of conjectures in the 
houses where the Vanneaulx spent their evenings. The 


TASCHERON. 


53 


most divergent opinions had more than once divided parties 
at boston. Some knowing folk came to the conclusion that 
there was a treasure hidden under the growing luzern. 

“ If I were in Mme. des Vanneaulx’s place,” remarked one 
pleasant gentleman, “ I would not worry my uncle, I know. 
If somebody murders him, well and good; somebody will 
murder him. I should come in for the property.” 

Mme. des Vanneaulx, however, thought differently. As a 
manager at the Theatre-Italien implores the tenor who “draws ” 
a full house to be very careful to wrap up his throat, and gives 
him his cloak when the singer has forgotten his overcoat, so 
did Mme. des Vanneaulx try to watch over her relative. She 
had offered little Pingret a magnificent yard dog, but the old 
man sent the animal back again by Jeanne Malassis his 
servant. 

“ Your uncle has no mind to have one more mouth to feed 
up at our place,” said the handmaid to Mme. des Vanneaulx. 

The event proved that his niece’s fears had been but too 
well founded. Pingret was murdered one dark night in the 
patch of luzern, whither he had gone, no doubt, to add a few 
louis to a pot full of gold. The servant, awakened by the 
sounds of the struggle, had the courage to go to the old man’s 
assistance, and the murderer found himself compelled to kill 
her also, lest she should bear witness against him. This cal¬ 
culation of probable risks, which nearly always prompts a 
man guilty of one murder to add another to his account, is 
one unfortunate result of the capital sentence which he beholds 
looming in the distance. 

The double crime was accompanied by strange circum¬ 
stances, which told as strongly for the defense as for the prose¬ 
cution. When the neighbors had seen nothing of Pingret nor 
of the servant for the whole morning; when, as they came 
and went, they looked through the wooden railings and saw 
that the doors and windows (contrary to wont) were still 
barred and fastened, the thing began to be bruited abroad 

P 


54 


THE COUNTRY TARS ON. 


through the Faubourg Saint-Etienne, till it reached Mme. des 
Vanneaulx in the Rue des Cloches. Mme. des Vanneaulx, 
whose mind always ran on horrors, sent for the police, and the 
doors were broken open. In the four patches of luzern there 
were four gaping holes in the earth, surrounded by rubbish, 
and strewn with broken shards of the pots which had been 
full of gold the night before. In two of the holes, which 
had been partly filled up, they found the bodies of old Pingret 
and Jeanne Malassis, buried in their clothes; she, poor thing, 
had run out barefooted in her night-dress. 

While the public prosecutor, the commissary, and the exam¬ 
ining magistrate took down all these particulars, the unlucky 
des Vanneaulx collected the scraps of broken pottery, put 
them together, and calculated the amount the jars should have 
held. The authorities, perceiving the common-sense of this 
proceeding, estimated the stolen treasure at a thousand pieces 
per pot; but what was the value of those coins ? Had they 
been forty or forty-eight franc pieces, twenty-four or twenty 
francs? Every creature in Limoges who had expectations 
felt for the des Vanneaulx in this trying situation. The sight 
of those fragments of crockery-ware which once held gold 
gave a lively stimulus to Limousin imaginations. As for little 
Pingret, who often came to sell his vegetables in the market 
himself, who lived on bread and onions, and did not spend 
three hundred francs in a year, who never did anybody a good 
turn, nor any harm either, no one regretted him in the least—• 
he had never done a pennyworth of good to the Faubourg 
Saint-Etienne. As for Jeanne Malassis, her heroism was con¬ 
sidered to be ill-timed; the old man, if he had lived, would 
have grudged her reward; altogether, her admirers were few 
compared with the number of those who remarked, “ I should 
have slept soundly in her place, I know ! ” 

Then the curious and the next-of-kin were made aware of 
the inconsistencies of certain misers. The police, when they 


TASCHERON. 


56 


came to draw up the report, could find neither pen nor ink in 
the bare, cold, dismal, tumble-down house. The little old 
man’s horror of expense was glaringly evident: in the great 
holes in the roof, which let in rain and snow as well as light; 
in the moss-covered cracks which rent the walls \ in the rotting 
doors ready to drop from their hinges at the least shock; in the 
unoiled paper which did duty as glass in the windows. There 
was not a window curtain in the house, not a looking-glass 
over the mantel-shelves; the grates were chiefly remarkable 
for the absence of fire-irons and the accumulation of damp 
soot, a sort of varnish over the handful of sticks or the log 
of wood which lay on the hearth. And as to the furniture— 
a few crippled chairs and maimed armchairs, two beds, hard 
and attenuated (Time had adorned old Pingret’s bed-curtains 
with open-work embroidery of a bold design), one or two 
cracked pots and riveted plates, a worm-eaten bureau, where 
the old man used to keep his garden seeds, household linen 
thick with darns and patches—the furniture, in short, con¬ 
sisted of a mass of rags, which had only a sort of life kept in 
them by the spirit of their owner, and now that he was gone, 
they dropped to pieces and crumbled to powder. At the 
first touch of the brutal hands of the police officers and 
infuriated next-of-kin they evaporated, heaven knows how, 
and came to nameless ruin and an indefinable end. They 
were not. Before the terrors of a public auction they vanished 
away. 

For a long time the greater part of the inhabitants of the 
capital of Limousin continued to take an interest in the hard 
case of the worthy des Vanneaulx, who had two children; 
but as soon as justice appeared to have discovered the perpe¬ 
trator of the crime, this person absorbed all their attention, 
he became the hero of the day, and the des Vanneaulx were 
relegated to the obscurity of the background. 

Towards the end of the month of March, Mme. Graslin 
had already felt the discomforts incidental to her condition, 


56 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


which could no longer be concealed. By that time inquiries 
were being made into the crime committed in the Faubourg 
Saint-Etienne, but the murderer was still at large. Veronique 
received visitors in her bedroom, whither her friends came for 
their game of whist. A few days later Mine. Graslin kept 
her room altogether. • More than once already she had been 
seized with the unaccountable fancies commonly attributed to 
women with child. Her mother came almost every day to 
see her; the two spent whole hours in each other’s society. 

It was nine o’clock. The card-tables were neglected, every 
one was talking about the murder and the des Vanneaulx, 
when the Vicomte de Granville came in. 

“We have caught the man who murdered old Pingret! ” 
he cried in high glee. 

“ And who is it ? ” The question came from all sides. 

“One of the workmen in a porcelain factory, a man of 
exemplary conduct, and in a fair way to make his fortune. 
He is one of your husband’s old workmen,’’ he added, turn¬ 
ing to Mine. Graslin. 

“ Who is it ? ” Veronique asked faintly. 

“ Jean-Fran^ois Tascheron.” 

“The unfortunate man!” she exclaimed. “Yes. 1 re¬ 
member seeing him several times. My poor father recom¬ 
mended him to me as a valuable hand-” 

“He left the place before Sauviat died,” remarked old 
Mine. Sauviat; “he went over to the MM. Philippart to 
better himself. But is my daughter well enough to hear 
about this?,” she added, looking at Mine. Graslin, who was 
as white as the sheets. 

After that evening old Mother Sauviat left her house, and 
in spite of her seventy years, installed herself as her daugh¬ 
ter’s nurse. She did not leave Veronique’s room. No matter 
at what hour Mme. Graslin’s friends called to see her, they 
found the old mother sitting heroically at her post by the bed- 



TASCHERON. 


57 


side, busied with her eternal knitting, brooding over her 
V^ronique as in the days of the smallpox, answering for her 
child, and sometimes denying her to visitors. The love 
between the mother and daughter was so well known in 
Limoges that people took the old woman'’s ways as a matter 
of course. 

A few days later, when the Vicomte de Granville began to 
give some of the details of the Tascheron case, in which the 
whole town took an eager interest, thinking to interest the 
invalid. La Sauviat cut him short by asking if he meant to 
give Mme. Graslin bad dreams again, but Veronique begged 
M. de Granville to go on, fixing her eyes on his face. So it 
fell out that Mme. Graslin’s friends heard in her house the 
result of the preliminary examination, soon afterwards made 
public, at first-hand from the avocat general. Here, in a con¬ 
densed form, is the substance of the indictment which was 
being drawn up by the prosecution : 

Jean-Frangois Tascheron was the son of a small farmer 
burdened with a large family, who lived in the township 
of Montegnac. Twenty years before the perpetration of 
this crime, whose memory still lingers in Limousin, Canton 
Montegnac bore a notoriously bad character. It was alleged 
in the criminal court of Limoges that fifty out of every 
hundred convictions came from the Montegnac district. 
Since i8i6, two years after the arrival of the new cure, 
M. Bonnet, Montegnac lost its old reputation, and no longer 
sent up its contingent to the assizes. The change was gen¬ 
erally set down to M. Bonnet’s influence in the commune, 
which had once been a perfect hotbed of bad characters who 
gave trouble in all the country round about. Jean-Frangois 
Tascheron’s crime suddenly restored Montegnac to its former 
unenviable pre-eminence. It happened, singularly enough, 
that the Tascherons had been almost the only family in the 
countryside which had not departed from the old exemplary 


58 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


traditions and religious habits now fast dying out in country 
places. In them the cure had found a moral support and 
basis of operations, and naturally he thought a great deal of 
them. The whole family were hard workers, remarkable for 
their honesty and the strong affection that bound them to each 
other; Jean-Frangois Tascheron had had none but good ex¬ 
amples set before him at home. A praiseworthy ambition had 
brought him to Limoges. He meant to make a little fortune 
honestly by a handicraft, and left the township, to the regret 
of his relations and friends, who were very much attached to 
him. 

His conduct during his two years of apprenticeship was 
admirable ; apparently no irregularity in his life had foreshad¬ 
owed the hideous crime for which he forfeited his life. The 
leisure which other workmen wasted in the wineshop and 
debauches, Tascheron spent in study. 

Justice in the provinces has plenty of time on her hands, 
but the most minute investigation threw no light whatever on 
the secrets of his existence. The landlady of Jean Francois’ 
humble lodging, skillfully questioned, said that she had never 
had such a steady young man as a lodger. He was pleasant- 
spoken and good-tempered, almost gay, as you miglit say. 
About a year ago a change seemed to come over him. He 
would stop out all night several times a month, and often for 
several nights at a time. She did not know whereabouts in 
the town he spent those nights. Still, she had sometimes 
thought, judging by the mud on his boots, that her lodger 
had been somewhere out in the country. He used to wear 
pumps, too, instead of hobnailed boots, although he was 
going out of the town, and before he went he used to shave 
and scent himself, and put on clean clothes. 

The examining magistrate carried his investigation to such 
a length that inquiries were made in houses of ill-fame and 
among licensed prostitutes, but no one knew anything of 
Jean-Fran^ois Tascheron : other inquiries made among the 


TASCHERON. 


59 


class of factory operatives and shop-girls met with no better 
success; none of those whose conduct was light had any rela¬ 
tions wdth the accused. 

A crime without any motive whatever is inconceivable, 
especially when the criminal’s bent was apparently towards 
self-improvement, w^hile his ambitions argued higher ideals 
and sense superior to that of other workmen. The whole 
criminal department, like the examining magistrate, were fain 
to find a motive for the murder in a passion for play on Tas- 
cheron’s part; but after minute investigation, it was proved 
that the accused had never gambled in his life. 

From the very first Jean-Frangois took refuge in a system 
of denial which could not but break down in the face of 
circumstantial evidence when his case should come before a' 
jury; but his manner of defending himself suggested the 
intervention of some person well acquainted with the law, or 
gifted with no ordinary intelligence. The evidence of his 
guilt, as in most similar cases, was at once unconvincing and 
yet too strong to be set aside. The principal points which 
told against Tascheron were four—his absence from home on 
the night of the murder (he would not say where he spent 
that night, and scorned to invent an alibi') ; a shred of his 
blouse, torn without his knowledge during the struggle with 
the poor servant-girl, and blown by the wind into the tree 
where it was found; the fact that he had been seen hanging 
about the house that evening by people in the suburb, who 
would not have remembered this but for the crime which 
followed ; and, lastly, a false key which he had made to fit the 
lock of the garden-gate, which w^as entered from the fields. 
It had been hidden rather ingeniously in one of the holes, 
some two feet below the surface. M. des Vanneaulx had 
come upon it while digging to see whether by chance there 
might be a second hoard beneath the first. The police suc¬ 
ceeded in finding out the man who supplied the steel, the 
vise, and the key-file. This had been their first clue, it put 


60 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


them on Tascheron’s track, and finally they arrested him on 
the limits of the department in a woods where he was waiting 
for the diligence. An hour later, and he would have been on 
his way to America. Moreover, in spite of the care with 
which the footprints had been erased in the trampled earth 
and on the muddy road, the rural policeman had found the 
marks of thin shoes, clear and unmistakable', in the soil. 
Tascheron’s lodgings were searched, and a pair of pumps 
were found which exactly corresponded with the impress, a 
fatal coincidence which confirmed the curious observations 
of his landlady. 

Then the criminal investigation department saw another 
influence at work in the crime, and a second and perhaps a 
prime mover in the case. Tascheron must have had an 
accomplice, if only for the reason that it was impossible for 
one man to take away such a weight of coin. No man, how¬ 
ever strong, could carry twenty-five thousand francs in gold 
very far. If each of the pots had held so much, he must 
have made four journeys. Now, a singular accident deter¬ 
mined the very hour when the deed was done. Jeanne 
Malassis, springing out of bed in terror at her master’s 
shrieks, had overturned the table on which her watch lay 
(the one present which the miser had made her in five years). 
The fall had broken the mainspring, and stopped the hands 
at two o’clock. 

In mid-March, the time of the murder, the sun rises be¬ 
tween five and six in the morning. So on the hypothesis 
traced out by the police and the department, it was clearly 
impossible that Tascheron should have carried off the money 
unaided and alone, even for a short distance, in the time. 
The evident pains which the man had taken to erase other 
footprints to the neglect of his own, also indicated an un¬ 
known assistant. 

Justice, driven to invent some reason for the crime, decided 
on a frantic passion for some woman, and, as she was not to 


TASCHERON. 


61 


be found among the lower classes, forensic sagacity looked 
higher. 

Could it be some woman of the bourgeoisie who, feeling 
sure of the discretion of a lover of so puritanical a cut, had 
read with him the opening chapters of a romance which had 
ended in this ugly tragedy ? There were circumstances in 
the case which almost bore out this theory. The old man 
had been killed by blows from a spade. The murder, it 
seemed, was the result of chance, a sudden fortuitous develop¬ 
ment, and not a part of a deliberate plan. The two lovers 
might, perhaps, have concerted the theft, but not the second 
crime. Then Tascheron the lover and Pingret the miser had 
crossed each other’s paths, and in the thick darkness of 
night two inexorable passions met on the same spot, both 
attracted thither by gold. 

Justice devised a new plan for obtaining light on these dark 
facts. Jean-Fran9ois had a favorite sister; her they arrested 
and examined privately, hoping in this way to come by a 
knowledge of the mysteries of her brother’s private life. 
Denise Tascheron denied all knowledge of his affairs; pru¬ 
dence dictating a system of negative answers which led her 
questioners to suspect that she really knew the reasons of the 
crime. Denise Tascheron, as a matter of fact, knew nothing 
whatever about it, but for the rest of her days she was to be 
under a cloud in consequence of her detention. 

The accused showed a spirit very unusual in a workingman. 
He was too clever for the cleverest “ sheep of the prisons” 
with whom he came in contact—though he did not discover 
that he had to do with a spy. The keener intelligences 
among the magistracy saw in him a murderer through passion, 
not through necessity, like the common herd of criminals 
who pass by way of the petty sessions and the hulks to a 
capital charge. He was shrewdly plied with questions put 
with this idea; but the man’s wonderful discretion left the 
magistrates much where they were before. The romantic but 


62 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


plausible theory of a passion for a woman of higher rank, once 
admitted, insidious questions were suddenly asked more than 
once; but Jean-Frangois discretion issued victorious from all 
the mental tortures which the ingenuity of an examining mag¬ 
istrate could inflict. 

As a final expedient, Tascheron was told that the person 
for v/hom he had committed the crime had been discovered 
and arrested; but his face underwent no change, he contented 
himself with the ironical retort, “ I should be very glad to see 
that person.” 

When these details became known, there were plenty of 
people who shared the magistrate’s suspicions, confirmed to 
all appearance by the behavior of the accused, who main¬ 
tained the silence of a savage. An all-absorbing interest 
attached to a young man who had come to be a problem. 
Every one will understand how the public curiosity was stimu¬ 
lated by the facts of the case, and how eagerly reports of the 
examination were followed ; for, in spite of all the probings 
of the police, the case for the prosecution remained on the 
brink of a mystery, which the authorities did not dare to 
penetrate, beset with dangers as it was. In some cases a half¬ 
certainty is not enough for the magistracy. So it was hoped 
that the buried truth would arise and come to light at the 
great day of the assizes, an occasion when criminals fre¬ 
quently lose their heads. 

It happened that M. Graslin was on the jury empaneled for 
the occasion, and Veronique could not but hear through him 
or through M. de Granville the whole story of a trial which 
kept Limousin, and indeed all France, in excitement for a 
fortnight. The behavior of the prisoner at the bar justified 
the romances founded on the conjectures of justice which 
were current in the town; more than once his eyes were 
turned searchingly on the bevy of women privileged to enjoy 
the spectacle of a sensational drama in real life. Every time 
that the clear impenetrable gaze was turned on the fashionable 


TASCHEROM. 


audience, it produced a flutter of consternation, so greatly 
did every woman fear lest she might seem to inquisitive eyes 
in the court to be the prisoner’s partner in guilt. 

The useless efforts of the criminal investigation department 
were then made public, and Limoges was informed of the pre¬ 
cautions taken by the accused to ensure the complete success 
of his crime. 

Some months before that fatal night, Jean-Frangois had pro¬ 
cured a passport for North iVmerica. Clearly he had meant 
to leave France. Clearly, therefore, the woman in the case 
must be married ; for there was, of course, no object to be 
gained by eloping with a young girl. Perhaps it was a desire 
to maintain the fair unknown in luxury which had prompted 
the crime; but, on the other hand, a search through the regis¬ 
ters of the administration had discovered that no passport for 
that country had been made out in a woman’s name. The 
police had even investigated the registers in Paris as well as 
those of the neighboring perfectures, but fruitlessly. 

As the case proceeded, every least detail brought to light 
revealed profound forethought on the part of a man of no 
ordinary intelligence. While the most virtuous ladies of 
Limousin explained the sufficiently inexplicable use of even¬ 
ing shoes for a country excursion on muddy roads and heavy 
soil, by the plea that it was necessary to spy upon old Pingret; 
the least coxcombically given of men were delighted to point 
out how eminently a pair of thin pumps favored noiseless 
movements about a house, scaling windows, and stealing along 
corridors. 

Evidently Jean-Franqois Tascheron and his mistress, a 
young, romantic, and beautiful woman (for every one drew 
a superb portrait of the lady), had contemplated forgery, and 
the words “and wife ” were to be filled in after his name on 
the passport. 

Card-parties were broken up during these evenings by mali¬ 
cious conjectures and comments. People began to cast about 


64 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


for the names of women who went to Paris during March, 
1829; or of others who might be supposed to have made pre¬ 
parations openly or secretly for flight. The trial supplied 
Limoges with a second Fualdes case, with an unknown Mine. 
Manson by way of improvement on the first. Never, indeed, 
was any country town so puzzled as Limoges after the court 
rose each day. People’s very dreams turned on the trial. 
Everything that transpired raised the accused in their eyes; 
his answers, skillfully turned over and over, expanded and 
edited, supplied a theme for endless argument. One of the 
jury asked, for instance, why Tascheron had taken a passport 
for America, to which the prisoner replied that he meant to 
open a porcelain factory there. In this way he screened his 
accomplice without quitting his line of defense, and supplied 
conjecture with a plausible and sufficient motive for the crime 
in this ambition of his. 

In the thick of these disputes, it was impossible that Veron- 
ique’s friends should not also try to account for Tascheron’s 
close reserve. One evening she seemed better than usual. 
The doctor had prescribed exercise; and that very morning 
Veronique, leaning on her mother’s arm, had walked out as 
far as Mme. Sauviat’s cottage, and rested there a while. When 
she came home again, she tried to sit up until her husband 
returned, but Graslin was late, and did not come back from 
the court till eight o’clock ; his wife waited on him at din¬ 
ner after her usual custom, and in this way she could not 
help but hear the discussion between her husband and his 
friends. 

We should have known more about this if my poor father 
were still alive,” said Veronique, or perhaps the man would 

not have committed the crime- But I notice that you 

have all of you taken one strange notion into your heads! 
You will have it that there is a woman at the bottom of this 
business (as far as that goes I myself am of your opinion), but 
why do you think that she is a married woman ? Why cannot 



TASCHERON. 


65 


he have loved some girl whose father and mother refused to 
listen to him ? ” 

‘^Sooner or later a young girl might have been legitimately 
his, returned M. de Granville. “ Tascheron is not wanting 
in patience; he would have had time to make an independ¬ 
ence honestly; he could have waited until the girl was old 
enough to marry without her parents’ consent.” 

I did not know that such a marriage was possible,” said 
Mme. Graslin. “ Then how is it that no one had the least 
suspicion of it, here in a place where everybody knows the 
affairs of everybody else, and sees all that goes on in his 
neighbor’s house ? Two people cannot fall in love without 
at any rate seeing each other or being seen of each other! 
What do you lawyers think?” she continued, looking the 
avocat ghieral full in the eyes. 

“We all think that the woman must be the wife of some 
tradesman, a man in business.” 

“I am of a totally opposite opinion,” said Mme. Graslin. 
“That kind of woman has not sentiments sufficiently lofty,” 
a retort which drew all eyes upon her. Every one waited for 
the explanation of the paradox. 

“At night,” she said, “when I do not sleep, or when I 
lie in bed in the daytime, I cannot help thinking over this 
mysterious business, and I believe I can guess Tascheron’s 
motives. These are my reasons for thinking that it is a girl, 
and not a woman in the case. A married woman has other 
interests, if not other feelings; she has a divided heart in 
her, she cannot rise to the full height of the exaltation in¬ 
spired by a love so passionate as this. She must never have 
borne a child if she is to conceive a love in which maternal 
instincts are blended with those which spring from desire. 
It is quite clear that some woman who wished to be a sustain¬ 
ing power to him has loved this man. That unknown woman 
must have brought to her love the genius which inspires artists 
and poets, aye, and women also, but in another form, for it 
5 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


is a woman’s destiny to create, not things, but men. Our 
creations are our children, our children are our pictures, our 
books and statues. Are we not artists when we shape their 
lives from the first ? So I am sure that if she is not a girl, 
she is not a mother; I would stake my head upon it. Law¬ 
yers should have a woman’s instinct to apprehend the infinite 
subtle touches which continually escape them in so many 
cases. 

“If I had been your substitute,” she continued, turning 
to M. de Granville, “we should have discovered the guilty 
woman, always supposing that she is guilty. I think, with 
M. I’Abb^ Dutheil, that the two lovers had planned to go to 
America, and to live there on poor Pingret’s money, as they 
had none of their own. The theft, of course, led to the 
murder, the usual fatal consequence of the fear of detec¬ 
tion and death. And it would be worthy of you,” she 
added, with a suppliant glance at the young lawyer, “ to 
withdraw the charge of malice aforethought; you would save 
the miserable man’s life. He is so great in spite of his crime, 
that he would perhaps expiate his sins by some magnificent 
repentance. The works of repentance should be taken into 
account in the deliberations of justice. In these days there 
are no better ways of atoning an offense than by the loss of 
a head, or by founding, as in olden times, a Milan cathe¬ 
dral ? ” 

“Madame, your ideas are sublime,” returned the lawyer ; 
“but if the averment of malice aforethought were withdrawn, 
Tascheron would still be tried for his life ; and it is a case of 
aggravated theft, it was committed at night, the walls were 
scaled, the premises broken into-” 

“Then, do you think he will be condemned?” she asked, 
lowering her eyelids. 

“ I do not doubt it. The prosecution has the best of it.” 

A light shudder ran through Mme. Graslin. Her dress 
rustled. 


TASCHERON. 


67 


feel cold,” she said.^ 

She took her mother’s arm and went to bed. 

She is much better to-day,” said her friends. 

The next morning Veronique was at death’s door. She 
smiled at her doctor’s surprise at finding her in an almost 
dying state. 

“ Did I not tell you that the walk would do me no good? ” 
she said. 

Ever since the opening of the trial there had been no trace 
of either swagger or hypocrisy in Tascheron’s attitude. The 
doctor, always with a view to diverting his patient’s mind, 
tried to explain this attitude out of which the counsel for the 
defense made capital for his client. The counsel’s cleverness, 
the doctor opined, had dazzled the accused, who imagined 
that he should escape the capital sentence. Now and then an 
expression crossed his face which spoke plainly of hopes of 
some coming happiness greater than mere acquittal or reprieve. 
The whole previous life of this man of twenty-three was such 
a flat contradiction to the deeds which brought it to a close 
that his champions put forward his behavior as a conclusive 
argument. In fact, the clues spun by the police into a stout 
hypothesis fit to hang a man dwindled so pitiably when woven 
into the romance of the defense, that the prisoner’s counsel 
fought for his client’s life with some prospect of success. To 
save him he shifted the ground of the combat, and fought the 
battle out on the question of malice aforethought. It was 
admitted, without prejudice, that the robbery had been 
planned beforehand, but contended that the double murder 
had been the result of an unexpected resistance in both cases. 
The issue looked doubtful; neither side had made good their 
case. 

When the doctor went, the avocat general came in as usual 
to see Veronique before he went to the court. 

I have read the counsel’s speeches yesterday,” she told 


THE COUNTRY EARS ON 


him. To-day the other side will reply. I am so very much 
interested in the prisoner that I should like him to be saved. 
Could you not forego a triumph for once in your life ? Let 
the counsel for the defense gain the day. Come, make me a 
present of this life, and—perhaps—some day mine shall be 

yours- There is a doubt after that fine speech of Tasche- 

ron’s counsel; well, then, why not-” 

“Your voice is quivering-” said the Vicomte, almost 

taken by surprise. 

“ Do you know why? ” she asked. “ My husband has just 
pointed out a coincidence—hideous for a sensitive nature like 
mine—a thing that is likely to cause me my death. You will 
give the order for his head to fall just about the time when 
my child will be born.” 

“ Can I reform the Code?” asked the public prosecutor. 

“There, go! You do not know how to love!” she 
answered, and closed her eyes. 

She lay back on her pillow, and dismissed the lawyer with 
an imperative gesture. 

M. Graslin pleaded hard, but in vain, for an acquittal, ad¬ 
vancing an argument, first suggested to him by his wife, and 
taken up by two of his friends on the jury: “ If we spare the 
man’s life, the des Vanneaulx will recover Pingret’s money.” 
This irresistible argument told upon the jury, and divided 
them—seven for acquittal as against five. As they failed to 
agree, the president and assessors were obliged to add their 
suffrages, and they were on the side of the minority. Jean- 
Fran^ois Tascheron was found guilty of murder. 

When sentence was passed, Tascheron burst into a blind 
fury, natural enough in a man full of strength and life, but 
seldom seen in court when it is an innocent man who is con¬ 
demned. It seemed to every one who saw it that the drama 
was not brought to an end by the sentence. So obstinate a 
struggle (as often happens in such cases) gave rise to two 
diametrically opposite opinions as to the guilt of the central 




TASCHERON. 


figure in it. Some saw oppressed innocence in him, others a 
criminal justly punished. The Liberal party felt it incumbent 
upon them to believe in Tascheron’s innocence; it was not 
so much conviction on their part as a desire to annoy those in 
office. 

“What?” cried they. “Is a man to be condemned be¬ 
cause his foot happens to suit the size of a footmark ? Be¬ 
cause, forsooth, he was not at his lodgings at the time ? (As 
if any young fellow would not die sooner than compromise a 
woman !) Because he borrowed tools and bought steel ?— 
(for it has not been proved that he made the key). Because 
some one finds a blue rag in a tree, where old Pingret very 
likely put it himself to scare the sparrows, and it happens to 
match a slit made in the blouse? Take a man’s life on such 
grounds as these ! And, after all, Jean-Fran9ois has denied 
every charge, and the prosecution did not produce any wit¬ 
ness who had seen him commit the crime.” 

Then they fell to corroborating, amplifying, and paraphras¬ 
ing the speeches made by the prisoner’s counsel and his line 
of defense. As for Pingret; what was Pingret ? A money¬ 
box which had been broken open; so said the freethinkers. 

A few so-called Progressives, who did not recognize the 
sacred laws of property (which the Saint-Simonians had 
already attacked in the abstract region of economical theory), 
went further still. 

“Old Pingret,” said these, “was the prime author of the 
crime. The man was robbing his country by hoarding the 
gold. What a lot of businesses that idle capital might have 
fertilized! He had thwarted industry; he was properly 
punished.” 

As for the servant-girl, they were sorry for her; and 
Denise, who had baffled the ingenuity of the lawyers, the girl 
who never opened her mouth at the trial without long ponder¬ 
ing over what she meant to say, excited the keenest interest. 
She became a figure comparable, in another sense, with Jeanie 


70 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Deans, whom she resembled in charm of character, modesty, 
in her religious nature and personal comeliness. So Francois 
Tascheron still continued to excite the curiosity not merely of 
Limoges, but of the whole department. Some romantic 
women openly expressed their admiration of him. 

“ If there is a love for some woman about him at the 
bottom of all this,” said these ladies, “ the man is certainly 
no ordinary man. You will see that he will die bravely ! ” 

Would he confess? Would he keep silence? Bets were 
taken on the question. Since that outburst of rage with 
which he received his doom (an outburst which might have 
had a fatal ending for several persons in court but for the 
intervention of the police), the criminal threatened violence 
indiscriminately to all and sundry who came near him, and 
with the ferocity of a wild beast. The gaoler was obliged to 
put him in a strait waistcoat; for if he was dangerous to 
others, he seemed quite as likely to attempt his own life. 
Tascheron’s despair, thus restrained from all overt acts of 
violence, found a vent in convulsive struggles which frightened 
the warders, and in language which, in the middle ages, 
would have been set down to demoniacal possession. 

He was so young that women were moved to pity that a 
life so filled with an all-engrossing love should be cut off. 
Quite recently, and as if written for the occasion, Victor 
Hugo’s sombre elegy and vain plea for the abolition of the 
death-penalty (that support of the fabric of society) had 
appeared, and “ The Condemned’s Last Day ” was the order 
of the day in all conversations. Then finally, above the 
boards of the assizes, set, as it were, upon a pedestal, rose the 
invisible mysterious figure of a woman, standing there with 
her feet dipped in blood; condemned to suffer heart-rending 
anguish, yet outwardly to live in unbroken household peace. 
At her every one pointed the finger—and yet, they almost 
admired that Limousin Medea with the inscrutable brow and 
the heart of steel in her white breast. Perhaps she dwelt in 


TASCHERON. 


71 


the home of this one or that, and was the sister, cousin, wife, 
or daughter of such an one. What a horror in their midst! 
It is in the domain of the imagination, according to Napo¬ 
leon, that the power of the unknown is incalculably great. 

As for the des Vanneaulx’s hundred thousand francs, all the 
efforts of the police had not succeeded in recovering the 
money j and the criminal’s continued silence was a strange 
defeat for the prosecution. M. de Granville (in the place of 
the public prosecutor then absent at the Chamber of Deputies) 
tried the commonplace stratagem of inducing the condemned 
man to believe that the penalty might be commuted if a full 
confession were made. But the lawyer had scarcely showed 
himself before the prisoner greeted him with furious yells, 
and epileptic contortions, and eyes ablaze with anger and 
regret that hexould not kill his enemy. Justice could only 
hope that the Church might effect something at the last 
moment. Again and again the des Vanneaulx applied to the 
Abbe Pascal, the prison chaplain. The Abbe Pascal was not 
deficient in the peculiar quality which gains a priest a hearing 
from a prisoner. In the name of religion, he braved Tas- 
cheron’s transports of rage, and strove to utter a few words 
amidst the storms that convulsed that powerful nature. But 
the struggle between spiritual paternity and the tempest of 
uncontrolled passions was too much for poor Abbe Pascal; he 
retired from it defeated and worn out. 

*‘That is a man who has found his heaven here on earth,” 
the old priest murmured softly to himself. 

Then little Mme. des Vanneaulx thought of approaching the 
criminal herself, and took counsel of her friends. The Sieur 
des Vanneaulx talked of compromise. Being at his wits’ end, 
he even betook himself to M. de Granville, and suggested 
that he (M. de Granville) should intercede with the King for 
his uncle’s murderer if only, if only, the murderer would hand 
over those hundred thousand francs to the proper persons. 
The avocat gtneral retorted that the King’s majesty would not 


72 


THE COUNTRY PERSON 


Stoop to haggle with criminals. Then the des Vanneaulx 
tried Tascheron’s counsel, offering him twenty per cent, on 
the total amount as an inducement to recover it for them. 
This lawyer was the one creature whom Tascheron could see 
without flying into a fury; him, therefore, the next-of-kin 
empowered to offer ten per cent, to the murderer, to be paid 
over to the man’s family. But in spite of the mutilations 
which these beavers were prepared to make in their heritage, 
in spite of the lawyer’s eloquence, Tascheron continued obdu¬ 
rate. Then the des Vanneaulx, waxing wroth, anathematized 
the condemned man and called down curses upon his head. 

“ He is not only a murderer, he has no sense of decency ! ” 
cried they, in all seriousness, ignorant though they were of 
the famous Plaint of Fualdes. The Abbe Pascal had totally 
failed, the application for a reversal of judgment seemed likely 
to succeed no better, the man would go to the guillotine, and 
then all would be lost. 

What good will our money be to him where he is going ? ” 
they wailed. A murder you can understand, but to steal a 
thing that is of no use ! The thing is inconceivable. What 
times we live in, to be sure, when people of quality take an 
interest in such a bandit! He does not deserve it.” 

“ He has very little sense of honor,” said Mme. des Van¬ 
neaulx. 

Still, suppose that giving up the money should compro¬ 
mise his sweetheart! ” suggested an old maid. 

We would keep his secret,” cried the Sieur des Vanneaulx. 

*‘But then you would become accessories after the fact,” 
objected a lawyer. 

“ Oh ! the scamp ! ” This was the Sieur des Vanneaulx’s 
conclusion of the whole matter. 

The des Vanneaulx’s debates were reported with some 
amusement to Mme. Graslin by one of her circle, a very 
clever woman, a dreamer and idealist, for whom everything 
must be faultless. The speaker regretted the condemned 


TASCHERON. 


73 


man’s fury; she would have had him cold, calm, and dig¬ 
nified. 

“Do you not see,” said Veronique, “that he is thrusting 
temptation aside and baffling their efforts. He is deliberately 
acting like a wild beast.” 

“Besides,” objected the Parisienne in exile, “he is not a 
gentleman, he is only a common man.” 

“ If he had been a gentleman, it would have been all over 
with that unknown woman long ago,” Mme. Graslin answered. 

These events, twisted and tortured in drawing-rooms and 
family circles, made to bear endless constructions, picked to 
pieces by the most expert tongues in the town, all contributed 
to invest the criminal with a painful interest, when, two 
months later, the appeal for mercy was rejected by the 
Supreme Court. How would he bear himself in his last 
moments ? He had boasted that he would make so desperate 
a fight for his life that it was impossible that he should lose it. 
Would he confess? Would his conduct belie his language? 
Which side would win their wagers? Are you going to be 
there? Are you not going? How are we to go? As a 
matter of fact, the distance from the prison of Limoges to the 
place of execution is very short, sparing the dreadful ordeal 
of a long transit to the prisoner, but also limiting the number 
of fashionable spectators. The prison is in the same building 
as the Palais de Justice, at the corner of the Rue du Palais 
and the Rue du Pont-Herisson. The Rue du Palais is the direct 
continuation of the short Rue de Monte-a-Regret which leads 
to the Place d’Aine or des Ar^nes, where executions take place 
(hence, of course, its name). The way, as has been said, is 
very short, consequently there are not many houses along it, 
and but few windows. What persons of fashion would care 
to mingle with the crowd in the square on such an occasion? 

But the execution expected from day to day was day after 
day put off, to the great astonishment of the town, and for the 
following reasons; The pious resignation of the greatest 


74 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


scoundrels on their way to death is a triumph reserved for the 
Church, and a spectacle which seldom fails to impress the 
crowd. Setting the interests of Christianity totally aside 
(although this is a principle never lost sight of by the Church), 
the condemned man’s repentance is too strong a testimony to 
the power of religion for the clergy not to feel that a failure 
on these conspicuous occasions is a heart-breaking misfortune. 
This feeling was aggravated in 1829, for party spirit ran high 
and poisoned everything, however small, which had any bear¬ 
ing on politics. The Liberals were in high glee at the pros¬ 
pect of a public collapse of the priestly party,” an epithet 
invented by Montlosier, a Royalist who went over to the 
Constitutionals and was carried by his new associates further 
than he intended. A party, in its corporate capacity, is 
guilty of disgraceful actions which in an individual would be 
infamous, and so it happens that when one man stands out 
conspicuous as the expression and incarnation of that party, 
in the eyes of the crowd he is apt to become a Robespierre, a 
Judge Jeffreys, a Laubardemont—a sort of altar of expiation 
to which others equally guilty attach ex votos in secret. 

There was an understanding between the episcopal authori¬ 
ties and the police authorities, and still the execution was put 
off, partly to secure a triumph for religion, but quite as much 
for another reason—by the aid of religion justice hoped to 
arrive at the truth. The power of the public prosecutor, 
however, had its limits; sooner or later the sentence must be 
carried out; and the very Liberals who insisted, for the sake 
of opposition, on Tascheron’s innocence, and had tried to 
upset the case, now began to grumble at the delay. Opposi¬ 
tion, when systematic, is apt to fall into inconsistencies; for 
the point in question is not to be in the right, but to have a 
stone always ready to sling at authority. So towards the 
beginning of August, the hand of authority was forced by the 
clamor (often a chance sound echoed by empty heads) called 
public opinion. The execution was announced. 


TASCHERON. 


76 


In this extremity the Abbe Diitheil took it upon himself to 
suggest a last resource to the bishop. One result of the suc¬ 
cess of this plan will be the introduction of another actor in 
the judicial drama, the extraordinary personage who forms a 
connecting link between the different groups in it; the greatest 
of all figures in this Sdne; the guide who should hereafter 
bring Mme. Graslin on a stage where her virtues were to shine 
forth with the brightest lustre ; where she would exhibit a great 
and noble charity and act the part of a Christian and a min¬ 
istering angel. 

The bishop’s palace at Limoges stands on the hillside above 
the Vienne. The gardens, laid out in terraces supported by 
solidly-built walls, crowned by balustrades, descend stepwise, 
following the fall of the land to the river. The sloping ridge 
rises high enough to give the spectator on the opposite bank 
the impression that the Faubourg Saint-Etienne nestles at the 
foot of the lowest terrace of the bishop’s garden. Thence, 
as you walk in one direction, you look out across the river, 
and in the other along its course through the broad fertile 
landscape. When the Vienne has flowed westward past the 
palace gardens, it takes a sudden turn towards Limoges, skirt¬ 
ing the Faubourg Saint-Martial in a graceful curve. A little 
further, and beyond the suburb, it passes a charming country 
house called the Cluzeau. You can catch a glimpse of the 
walls from the nearest point of the nearest terrace, a trick of 
the perspective uniting them with the church towers of the 
suburb. Opposite the Cluzeau lies the island in the river, 
with its indented shores, its thickly growing poplars and forest 
trees, the island which Veronique in her girlhood called the 
Isle of France. Eastward, the low hills shut in the horizon 
like the walls of an amphitheatre. 

The charm of the situation and the rich simplicity of the 
architecture of the palace mark it out among the other build¬ 
ings of a town not conspicuously happy in the choice or 
employment of its building materials. The view from the 


76 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


gardens, which attracts travelers in search of the picturesque, 
had long been familiar to the Abbe Dutheil. He had brought 
M. de Grancour with him this evening, and went down from 
terrace to terrace, taking no heed of the sunset shedding its 
crimson and orange and purple over the balustrades along the 
steps, the houses on the suburb, and the waters of the river. 
He was looking for the bishop, who at that moment sat under 
the vines in a corner of the furthest terrace, taking his dessert, 
and enjoying the charms of the evening at his ease. 

The long shadows cast by the poplars on the island fell like 
a bar across the river; the sunlight lit up their topmost crests, 
yellowed somewhat already, and turned the leaves to gold. 
The glow of the sunset, differently reflected from the different 
masses of green, composed a glorious harmony of subdued 
and softened color. A faint evening breeze stirring in the 
depths of the valley ruffled the surface of the Vienne into a 
broad sheet of golden ripples that brought out in contrast all 
the sober hues of the roofs in the Faubourg Saint-Etienne. 
The church towers and housetops of the Faubourg Saint- 
Martial were blended in the sunlight with the vine-stems of 
the trellis. The faint hum of the country town, half-hidden 
in the re-entering curve of the river, the softness of the air— 
all sights and sounds combined to steep the prelate in the 
calm recommended for the digestion by the authors of every 
treatise on that topic. Unconsciously the bishop fixed his 
eyes on the right bank of tlie river, on a spot where the length¬ 
ening shadows of the poplars in the island had reached the 
bank by the Faubourg Saint-Etienne, and darkened the walls 
of the garden close to the scene of the double murder of old 
Pingret and the servant; and just as his snug felicity of the 
moment was troubled by the difficulties which his vicars-general 
recalled to his recollection, the bishop’s expression grew 
inscrutable by reason of many thoughts. The two subordinates 
attributed his absence of mind to ennui; but, on the contrary, 
the bishop had just discovered in the sands of the Vienne the 


TASCHEJ^ON. 


77 


key to the puzzle, the clue which the des Vanneaulx and the 
police were seeking in vain. 

My lord,” began the Abbe de Grancour, as he came up 
to the bishop, “ everything has failed; we shall have the sor¬ 
row of seeing that unhappy Tascheron die in mortal sin. He 
will bellow the most awful blasphemies; he will heap insults 
on poor Abbe Pascal; he will spit on the crucifix, and deny 
everything, even hell-fire.” 

‘‘He will frighten the people,” said the Abbe Dutheil. 
“ The very scandal and horror of it will cover our defeat and 
our inability to prevent it. So, as I was saying to M. de 
Grancour as we came, may this scene drive more than one 
sinner back to the bosom of the Church.” 

His words seemed to trouble the bishop, who laid down the 
bunch of grapes which he was stripping on the table, wiped 
his fingers, and signed to his two vicars-general to be seated. 

“The Abbe Pascal has managed badly,” said he at last. 

“ He is quite ill after the last scene with the prisoner,” said 
the Abbd de Grancour. “If he had been well enough to 
come, we should have brought him with us to explain the 
difficulties which put all the efforts which your lordship might 
command out of our power.” 

“ The condemned man begins to sing obscene songs at the 
top of his voice when he sees one of us; the noise drowns 
every word as soon as you try to make yourself heard,” said 
a young priest who was sitting beside the bishop. 

The young speaker leaned his right elbow on the table, his 
white hand drooped carelessly over the bunches of grapes as 
he selected the reddest berries, with the air of being perfectly 
at home. He had a charming face, and seemed to be either 
a table companion or a favorite with the bishop, and was, in 
fact, a favorite and the prelate’s table-companion. As the 
younger brother of the Baron de Rastignac he was connected 
with the bishop of Limoges by the ties of family relationship 
and affection. Considerations of fortune had induced the 


78 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


young man to enter the Church ; and the bishop, aware of 
this, had taken his young relative as his private secretary 
'Until such time as advancement might befall him ; for the 
Abbe Gabriel bore a name which predestined him to the 
highest dignities of the Church. 

“Then have you been to see him, my son?” asked the bishop. 

“ Yes, my lord. As soon as I appeared, the miserable man 
poured out a torrent of the most disgusting language against 
you and me; his behavior made it impossible for a priest to 
stay with him. Will you permit me to offer you a piece of 
advice, my lord ? ” 

“Let us hear the wisdom which God sometimes puts into 
the mouth of babes,” said the bishop, 

“Did he not cause Balaam’s ass to speak?” the young 
Abbe de Rastignac retorted quickly. 

“According to some commentators, the ass was not very 
well aware of what she was saying,” the bishop answered, 
laughing. 

Both the vicars-general smiled. In the first place, it was 
the bishop’s joke; and, in the second, it glanced lightly on 
this young abbe, of whom all the dignitaries and ambitious 
churchmen grouped'about the bishop were envious. 

“ My advice would be to beg M. de Granville to put off 
the execution for a few days yet. If the condemned man 
knew that he owed those days of grace to our intercession, he 
would perhaps make some show of listening to us, and if he 
listens-” 

“ He will persist in his conduct when he sees what comes 
of it,” said the bishop, interrupting his favorite. “Gentle¬ 
men,” he resumed after a moment’s pause, “is the town 
acquainted with these details?” 

“Where will you find the house where they are not dis¬ 
cussed?” answered the Abbe de Grancour. “ The condition 
of our good Abbe Pascal since his last interview is matter of 
common talk at this moment.” 



TASCHERON, 


79 


'‘When is Tascheron to be executed?” asked the bishop. 

“To-morrow. It is market-day,” replied M. de Grancour. 

“Gentlemen, religion must not be vanquished,” cried the 
bishop. “The more attention is attracted to this affair, the 
more determined am I to secure a signal triumph. The' 
Church is passing through a difficult crisis. Miracles are 
called for here among an industrial population, where sedition 
has spread itself and taken root far and wide ; where religious 
and monarchical doctrines are regarded with a critical spirit; 
where nothing is respected by a system of analysis derived 
from Protestantism by the so-called Liberalism of to-day, 
which is free to take another name to-morrow. Go to M. de 
Granville, gentlemen, he is with us heart and soul; tell him 
that we ask for a few days’ respite. I will go to see the 
unhappy man.” 

“You, my lord ! ” cried the Abbe de Rastignac. “Will 
not too much be compromised if you fail ? You should only 
go when success is assured.” 

“ If my lord bishop will permit me to give my opinion,” 
said the Abbe Dutheil, “I think that I can suggest a means 
of securing the triumph of religion under these melancholy 
circumstances.” 

The bishop’s response was a somewhat cool sign of assent, 
which showed how low his vicar-general’s credit stood with 
him. 

“ If any one has any ascendency over this rebellious soul, 
and may bring it to God, it is M. Bonnet, the cure of the 
village where the man was born,” the Abbe Dutheil went 
on. 

“ One of your proteges,” remarked the bishop. 

“ My lord, M. Bonnet is one of those who recommend 
themselves by their militant virtues and evangelical labors.” 

This answer, so modest and simple, was received with a 
silence which would have disconcerted any one but the Abb6 
Dutheil. He had alluded to merits which had been over- 


80 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


looked, and the three who heard him chose to regard the 
words as one of the meek sarcasms, neatly put, impossible to 
resent, in which churchmen excel, accustomed as they are by 
their training to say the thing they mean without transgressing 
the severe rules laid down for them in the least particular. 
But it was nothing of the kind ; the abbe never thought of 
himself. Then— 

I have heard of Saint Aristides for too long,” the bishop 
made answer, smiling. “ If I were to leave his light under a 
bushel, it would be injustice or prejudice on my part. Your 
Liberals cry up your M. Bonnet as if he were one of them¬ 
selves; I mean to see this rural apostle and judge for myself. 
Go to the public prosecutor, gentlemen, and ask him in my 
name for a respite ; I will await his answer before despatching 
our well-beloved Abb6 Gabriel to Montegnac to fetch the holy 
man for us. We will put his beatitude in the way of work¬ 
ing a miracle-” 

The Abbe Dutheil flushed red at these words from the 
prelate-noble, but he chose to disregard any slight that they 
might contain for him. Both vicars-general silently took 
their leave, and left the greatly perplexed bishop alone with his 
young friend. 

“ The secrets of the confessional which we require lie buried 
there, no doubt,” said the bishop, pointing to the shadows of 
the poplars where they reached a lonely house half-way be¬ 
tween the island and the Faubourg Saint-Etienne. 

“So I have always thought,” Gabriel answered. “I am 
not a judge, and I do not care to play the spy; but if I had 
been the examining magistrate, I should know the name of 
the woman who is trembling now at every sound, at every 
word that is uttered, compelled all the while to wear a smooth, 
unclouded brow under pain of accompanying the condemned 
man to his death. Yet she has nothing to fear. I have seen 
the man—he will carry the secret of his passionate love to his 
grave.” 


TASCHERON. 


81 


Crafty young man ! ” said the bishop, pinching his secre¬ 
tary’s ear, as he pointed out a spot between the island in the 
river and the Faubourg Saint-Etienne, lit up by a last red ray 
from the sunset. The young priest’s eyes had been fixed on 
it as he spoke. “Justice ought to have searched there; is it 
not so? ” 

“ I went to see the criminal to try the effect of my guess 
upon him; but he is watched by spies, and, if I had spoken 
audibly, I might have compromised the woman for whom he 
is dying.” 

“Let us keep silent,” said the bishop. “We are not con¬ 
cerned with man’s justice. One head will fall, and that is 
enough. Besides, sooner or later, the secret will return to 
the Church.” 

The perspicacity of the priest, fostered by the habit of medi¬ 
tation, is far keener than the insight of the lawyer and the 
detective. After all the preliminary investigations, after the 
legal inquiry, and the trial at the assizes, the bishop and his 
secretary, looking down from the height of the terrace, had 
in truth, by dint of contemplation, succeeded in discovering 
details as yet unknown. 

M. de Granville was playing his evening game of whist in 
Mme. Graslin’s house, and his visitors were obliged to wait 
for his return. It was near midnight before his decision was 
known at the palace, and by two o’clock in the morning the 
Abb^ Gabriel started out for Montegnac in the bishop’s own 
traveling carriage, loaned to him for the occasion. The place 
is about nine leagues distant from Limoges ; it lies under the 
mountains of the Correze, in that part of Limousin which 
borders on the department of the Creuse. All Limoges, when 
the abbe left it, was in a ferment of excitement over the exe¬ 
cution promised for this day, an expectation destined to be 
balked once more. 


III. 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 

In priests and fanatics there is a certain tendency to insist 
upon the very utmost to which they are legally entitled where 
their interests are concerned. Is this a result of poverty ? Is 
an egoism which favors the development of greed one of the 
consequences of isolation upon a man’s character? Or are 
shrewd business habits, as well as parsimony, acquired by a 
course of management of charitable funds ? Each tempera¬ 
ment suggests a different explanation, but the fact remains the 
same whether it lurks (as not seldom happens) beneath urbane 
good-humor, or (and equally often) is openly manifested; and 
the difficulty of putting the hand in the pocket is evidently 
increasingly felt on a journey. 

Gabriel de Rastignac, the prettiest young gentleman who 
had bowed his head before the altar of the tabernacle for some 
time, only gave thirty sous to tlie postillions, and traveled 
slowly accordingly. The postillion tribe drive with all due 
respect a bishop who does but pay twice the amount demanded 
of ordinary mortals, but, at the same time, they are careful 
not to damage the episcopal equipage, for fear of getting them¬ 
selves into trouble. The abbe, traveling alone for the first 
time in his life, spoke mildly at each relay— 

“ Just drive on a little faster, can’t you?” 

“ You can’t get the whip to work without a little palm 
oil,” an old postillion replied, and the young abbe, much 
mystified, fell back in a corner of the carriage. He amused 
himself by watching the landscape through which they were 
traveling, and walked up a hill now and again on the winding 
road from Bordeaux to Lyons. 

Five leagues beyond Limoges the country changes. You 
have left behind the charming low hills about the Vienne 
( 82 ) 


THE CUE A OF MONl^GNAC. 


83 


and the fair meadow slopes of Limousin, which sometimes 
(and this particularly about Saint-Leonard) put you in mind 
of Switzerland. You find yourself in a wilder and sterner 
district. Wide moors, vast steppes without grass or herds of 
horses, stretch away to the mountains of the Correze on the 
horizon. The far-off hills do not tower above the plain, a 
grandly, rent wall of rock like the Alps in the south ; you look 
in vain for the desolate peaks and glowing gorges of the Apen- 
nine, or for the majesty of the Pyrenees—the curving wave¬ 
like swell of the hills of the Correze bears witness to their 
origin, to the peaceful slow subsidence of the waters which 
once overwhelmed this country. 

These undulations, characteristic of this, and, indeed, of 
most of the hill districts of France, have perhaps, contributed 
quite as much as the climate to gain for the land its title of 
“the kindly,” which Europe has confirmed. But it is a 
dreary transition country which separates Limousin from the 
provinces of Marche and Auvergne. In the mind of the poet 
and thinker who crosses it, it calls up visions of the Infinite 
(a terrible thought for certain souls); a woman looking out 
on its monotonous sameness is driven to muse; and to those 
who must dwell with the wilderness, nature shows herself stub¬ 
born, peevish, and barren ; ’tis a churlish soil that covers 
these wide gray plains. 

Only the neighborhood of a great capital can work such a 
miracle as transformed Brie during the last two centuries. 
Here there is no large settlement which sometimes puts life 
into the waste lands which the agricultural economist regards 
as blanks in creation, spots where civilization groans aghast, 
and the tourist finds no inns and a total absence of that pic¬ 
turesqueness in which he delights. 

But to lofty spirits the moors, the shadows needed in the 
vast picture of nature, are not repellent. In our own day, 
Fenimore Cooper, owner of so melancholy a talent, has set 
forth the mysterious charm of great solitudes magnificently in 


84 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


“The Prairie.” But the wastes shunned by every form of 
plant life, the barren soil covered with loose stones and water¬ 
borne pebbles, the “bad lands” of the earth, are so many 
challenges to civilization. France must face her difficulties 
and find a solution for them, as the British are doing; their 
patient heroism is turning the most barren heather-land in 
Scotland into productive farms. Left to their primitive deso¬ 
lation, these fallows produce a crop of discouragement, of 
idleness, of poor physique from insufficient food, and crime, 
whenever want grows too clamorous. In these few words, you 
have the past history of Montegnac. 

What is there to be done when a waste on so vast a scale is 
neglected by the administration, deserted by the nobles, exe¬ 
crated by workers? Its inhabitants declare war against a 
social system which refuses to do its duty, and so it was in 
former times with the folk of Montegnac. They lived, like 
Highlanders, by murder and rapine. At sight of that country, 
a thoughtful observer could readily imagine how that only 
twenty years ago the people of the village were at war with 
society at large. 

The wide plateau, cut away on one side by the Vienne, on 
another by the lovely valleys of Marche, bounded by the Au¬ 
vergne to the east, and shut in by the mountains of the Cor- 
reze on the south, is very much like (agriculture apart) the 
uplands of Beauce, which separate the basin of the Loire 
from the basin of the Seine, or the plateaux of Touraine or of 
Berri, or many others of these facets, as it were, on the sur¬ 
face of France, so numerous that they demand the careful 
attention of the greatest administrators. 

It is an unheard-of thing that while people complain that 
the masses are discontented with their condition, and con¬ 
stantly aspiring towards social elevation, a government cannot 
find a remedy for this in a country like France, where statistics 
show that there are millions of acres of land lying idle, and 
in some cases (as in Berri) covered with leaf mold seven or 


THE cure: of mont&gnac. 


85 


eight feet thick ! A good deal of this land which should 
support whole villages, and yield a magnificent return to culti¬ 
vation, is the property of pig-headed communes which refuse 
to sell to speculators because, forsooth, they wish to preserve 
the right of grazing some hundred cows upon it. Impotence 
is writ large over all these lands without a purpose. Yet every 
bit of land will grow some special thing, and neither arms 
nor will to work are lacking, but administrative ability and 
conscience. 

Hitherto the upland districts of France have been sacrificed 
to the valleys. The government has given its fostering protec¬ 
tion to districts well able to take care of themselves. But 
most of these unlucky wastes have no water supply, the first 
requisite for cultivation. The mists which might fertilize the 
gray dead soil by depositing their oxides are swept across 
them by the wind. There are no trees to arrest the clouds and 
suck up their nourishing moisture. A few plantations here 
and there would be a godsend in such places. The poor folk 
who live in these wilds, at a practically impossible distance 
from the nearest large town, are without a market for their 
produce—if they have any. Scattered about on the edges of 
a forest left to nature, they pick up their firewood and eke out 
a precarious existence by poaching; in the winter starvation 
stares them in the face. They have not capital enough to 
grow wheat, for so poor are they that ploughs and cattle are 
beyond their means; and they live on chestnuts. If you have 
wandered through some Natural History Museum and felt the 
indescribable depression which comes on after a prolonged 
study of the unvarying brown hues of the European specimens, 
you will perhaps understand how the perpetual contemplation 
of the gray plains must affect the moral conditions of tha 
people who live face to face with such disheartening ster¬ 
ility. There is no shadow, nor contrast, nor coolness; no 
sight to stir associations which gladden the mind. One could 
hail a stunted crab-tree there as a friend. 

Q 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


The high-road forked at length, and a cross-road branched 
off towards the village a few leagues distant. Montegnac 
lying (as its name indicates) at the foot of a ridge of hill is 
the chief village of a canton on the borders of Haute- 
Vienne. The hillside above belongs to the township which 
encircles hill country and plain; indeed, the commune is a 
miniature Scotland, and has its highlands and its lowlands. 
Only a league away, at the back of the hill which shelters the 
township, rises the first peak of the chain of the Correze, and 
all the country between is filled by the great forest of Mon- 
t^gnac, crowning the slope above the village, covering the little 
valleys and bleak undulating land (left bare in patches here 
and there), climbing the peak itself, stretching away to the 
north in a long narrow strip which ends abruptly in a point 
on a steep bank above the Aubusson road. That bit of steep 
bank rises above a deep hollow through which the high-road 
runs from Lyons to Bordeaux. Many a time coaches and 
foot-passengers have been stopped in the darkest part of the 
dangerous ravine; and the robberies nearly always went with¬ 
out punishment. The situation favored the highwaymen, who 
escaped by paths well known to them into their forest fast¬ 
nesses. In such a country the investigations of justice find 
little trace. People accordingly shunned that route. 

Without traffic neither commerce nor industry can exist; 
the exchange of intellectual and material wealth becomes 
impossible. The visible wonders of civilization are in all cases 
the result of the application of ideas as old as man. A thought 
in the mind of man—that is from age to age the starting-point 
and the goal of all our civilization. The history of Montegnac 
is a proof of this axiom of social science. When the administra¬ 
tion found itself in a position to consider the pressing prac¬ 
tical needs of the country, the strip of forest was felled, 
gendarmes were posted to accompany the diligence through 
the two stages; but, to the shame of the gendarmerie be it 
said, it was not the sword but a voice, not Corporal Chervin 


THE CUR A OF MONTilGNAC. 


87 


but Parson Bonnet, who won the battle of civilization by 
reforming the lives of the people. The cure, seized with pity 
and compassion for those poor souls, tried to regenerate them, 
and persevered till he gained his end. 

After another hour’s journey across the plains where flints 
succeed to dust, and dust to flints, and flocks of partridges 
abode in peace, rising at the approach of the carriage with a 
heavy whirring sound of their wings, the Abbe Gabriel, like most 
other travelers who pass that way, hailed the sight of the roofs 
of the township with a certain pleasure. As you enter Monteg- 
nac you are confronted by one of the queer posthouses, not 
to be found out of France. The signboard, nailed up with 
four nails above a sorry empty stable, is a rough oaken plank 
on which a pretentious postillion has carved an inscription, 
darkening the letters with ink : Poast bosses,” it runs. The 
door is nearly always wide open. The threshold is a plank set up 
edgewise in the earth to keep the rain-water out of the stable, 
the floor being below the level of the road outside. Within, 
the traveler sees, to his sorrow, the harness, worn, mildewed, 
mended with string, ready to give way at the first tug. The 
horses are probably not to be seen; they are at work on the 
land, or out at grass, anywhere and everywhere but in the 
stable. If by any chance they are within they are feeding. 
If the horses are ready, the postillion has gone to see his aunt 
or his cousin, or gone to sleep, or he is getting in his hay. 
Nobody knows where he is; you must wait while somebody goes 
to find him. He does not stir until he has a mind ; and when 
he comes, it takes him an eternity to find his w'aistcoat or his 
whip, or to rub down his cattle. The buxom dame in the door¬ 
way fidgets about even more restlessly than the traveler, and 
forestalls any outburst on his part by bestirring herself a good 
deal more quickly than the horses. She personates the post¬ 
mistress whose husband is out in the fields. 

It was in such a stable as this that the bishop’s favorite left 
his traveling carriage. The walls looked like maps^ the 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


U 

thatched roof, as gay with flowers as a garden bed, bent under 
the weight of its growing house-leeks. He asked the woman 
of the place to have everything in readiness for his departure 
in an hour’s time, and inquired of her his way to the parson¬ 
age. The good woman pointed out a narrow alley between 
two houses. That was the way to the church, she said, and 
he would find the parsonage hard by. 

While the abbe climbed the steep path paved with cobble¬ 
stones between the hedgerows on either side, the postmistress 
fell to questioning the postboy. Every postboy along the 
road from Limoges had passed on to his brother whip the 
surmises of the first postillion concerning the bishop’s inten¬ 
tions. So while Limoges was turning out of bed and talking 
of the execution of old Pingret’s murderer, the country-folk 
all along the road were spreading the news of the pardon 
procured by the bishop for the innocent prisoner, and prattling 
of supposed miscarriages of justice, insomuch that when Jean- 
Frangois came to the scaffold at a later day, he was likely to be 
regarded as a martyr. 

The Abbe Gabriel went some few paces along the footpath, 
red with autumn leaves, dark with blackberries and sloes; 
then he turned and stood, acting on the instinct which 
prompts us to make a survey of any strange place, an instinct 
which we share with the horse and dog. The reason of the 
choice of the site of Montdgnac was apparent; several streams 
broke out of the hillside, and a small river flowed along by 
the departmental road which leads from the township to the 
prefecture. Like the rest of the villages in this plateau, 
Montegnac is built of blocks of clay, dried in the sun ; if a 
fire broke out in a cottage, it is possible that it might find it 
earth and leave it brick. The roofs are of thatch ; altogether, 
it was a poor-looking place that the bishop’s messenger saw. 
Below Montegnac lay fields of rye, potatoes, and turnips, 
land won from the plain. In the meadows on the lowest 
slope of the hillside, watered by artificial channels, were 


THE CURA of MONTAGNAC. 


89 


some of the celebrated breed of Limousin horses; a legacy 
(so it is said) of the Arab invaders of France, who crossed 
the Pyrenees to meet death from the battle-axes of Charles 
Martel’s Franks, between Poitiers and Tours. Up above on 
the heights the soil looked parched. Now and again the 
reddish scorched surface, burnt bare by the sun, indicated the 
arid soil which the chestnuts love. The water, thriftily dis¬ 
tributed along the irrigation channels, was only sufficient to 
keep the meadows fresh and green ; on these hillsides grows 
the fine short grass, the delicate sweet pasture that builds you 
up a breed of horses delicate and impatient of control, fiery, 
but not possessed of much staying-power; unexcelled in their 
native district, but apt to change their character when they 
change their country. 

Some young mulberry trees indicated an intention of grow¬ 
ing silk. Like most villages, Montegnac could only boast a 
single street, to wit, the road that ran through it; but there 
was an Upper and Lower Montegnac on either side of it, 
each cut in two by a little pathway running at right angles to 
the road. The hillside below a row of houses on the ridge 
was gay with terraced gardens which rose from a level of 
several feet above the road, necessitating flights of steps, 
sometimes of earth, sometimes paved with cobble-stones. A 
few old women, here and there, who sat spinning or looking 
after the children, put some human interest into the picture, 
and kept up a conversation between Upper and Lower Mon- 
t^gnac by talking to each other across the road, usually quiet 
enough. In this way news traveled pretty quickly from one 
end of the township to the other. The gardens were full of 
fruit trees, cabbages, onions, and potherbs; beehives stood 
in rows along the terraces. 

A second parallel row of cottages lay below the road, their 
gardens sloping down towards the little river which flowed 
through fields of thick-growing hemp, the fruit trees which 
love damp places marking its course. A few cottages, the 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


posthouse among them, nestled in a hollow, a situation well 
adapted for the weavers who lived in them, and almost every 
house was overshadowed by the walnut trees, which flourish 
best in heavy soil. At the further end of Montegnac, and on 
the same side of the road, stood a house larger and more 
carefully kept than the rest; it was the largest of a group 
equally neat in appearance, a little hamlet, in fact, separated 
from the township by its gardens, and known then, as to-day, 
by the name of Tascherons.’ ” The commune was not much 
in itself, but some thirty outlying farms belonged to it. In 
the valley several water-lanes ” like those in Berri and 
Marche marked out the course of the little streams with green 
fringes. The whole commune looked like a green ship in the 
midst of a wide sea. 

Whenever a house, a farm, a village, or a district passes 
from a deplorable state to a more satisfactory condition of 
things, though as yet scarcely to be called strikingly pros¬ 
perous, the life there seems so much a matter of course, so 
natural, that at first sight a spectator can never guess how much 
toil went to the founding of that not extraordinary prosperity; 
what an amount of effort, vast in proportion to the strength 
that undertook it; what heroic persistence lies there buried 
and out of sight, effort and persistence without which the 
visible changes could not have taken place. So the young 
abb6 saw nothing unusual in the pleasant view before his eyes; 
he little knew what that country had been before M. Bonnet 
came to it. 

He turned and went a few paces further up the path, and 
soon came in sight of the church and parsonage, about six 
hundred feet above the gardens of Upper Montegnac. Both 
buildings, when first seen in the distance, were hard to dis¬ 
tinguish among the ivy-covered stately ruins of the old Castle 
of Montegnac, a stronghold of the Navarreins in the twelfth 
century. The parsonage house had every appearance of being 
built in the first instance for a steward or a head gamekeeper. 


THE CUR A OF MONTi:GNAC. 


91 


It stood at the end of a broad terrace planted with lime trees, 
and overlooked the whole countryside. The ravages of time 
bore witness to the antiquity of the flight of steps and the 
walls which supported the terrace, the stones had been forced 
out of place by the constant imperceptible thrusting of plant 
life in the crevices, until tall grasses and wild flowers had 
taken root among them. Every step was covered with a 
dark-green carpet of fine close moss. The masonry, solid 
though it was, was full of rifts and cracks, where wild plants 
of the pellitory and camomile tribe were growing ; the maiden¬ 
hair fern sprang from the loopholes in thick masses of shaded 
green. The whole face of the wall, in fact, was hung with 
the finest and fairest tapestry, damasked with bracken fronds, 
purple snap-dragons with their golden stamens, blue borage, 
and brown fern and moss, till the stone itself was only seen 
by glimpses here and there through its moist, cool covering. 

Up above, upon the terrace, the clipped box borders formed 
geometrical patterns in a pleasure garden framed by the par¬ 
sonage house, and behind the parsonage rose the crags, a pale 
background of rock, on which a few drooping, feathery trees 
struggled to live. The ruins of the castle towered above the 
house and the church. 

The parsonage itself, built of flints and mortar, boasted a 
single story and garrets above, apparently empty, to judge by 
the dilapidated windows on either gable under the high-pitched 
roof. A couple of rooms on the ground floor, separated by a 
passage with a wooden staircase at the farther end of it, two 
more rooms on the second floor, and a little lean-to kitchen 
built against the side of the house in the yard, where a stable 
and coach-house stood perfectly empty, useless, abandoned— 
this was all. The kitchen garden lay between the house and 
the church ; a ruinous covered passage led from the parsonage 
to the sacristy. 

The young abbe’s eyes wandered over the place. He 
noted the four windows with their leaded panes, the brown 


$2 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


moss-grown walls, the rough wooden door, so full of splits 
and cracks that it looked like a bundle of matches, and the 
adorable quaintness of it all by no means took his fancy. The 
grace of the plant life which covered the roofs, the wild 
climbing flowers that sprang from the rotting wooden sills 
and cracks in the wall, the trails and tendrils of the vines, 
covered with tiny clusters of grapes, which found their way 
in through the windows, as if they were fain to carry merri¬ 
ment and laughter into the house—all this he beheld, and 
thanked his stars that his way led to a bishopric, and not to a 
country parsonage. 

The house, open all day long, seemed to belong to every 
one. The Abbe Gabriel walked into the dining-room, which 
opened into the kitchen. The furniture which met his eyes 
was poor—an old oak table with four twisted legs, an easy- 
chair covered with tapestry, a few wooden chairs, and an old 
chest, which did duty as a sideboard. There was no one in 
the kitchen except the cat, the sign of a woman in the house. 
The other room was the parlor; glancing round it, the young 
priest noticed that the easy-chairs were made of unpolished 
wood, and covered with tapestry. The paneling of the walls, 
like the rafters, was of chestnut-wood, and black as ebony. 
There was a timepiece in a green case painted with flowers, a 
table covered with a worn green cloth, one or two chairs, and 
on the mantle-shelf an Infant Jesus in wax under a glass shade 
set between two candlesticks. The hearth, surrounded by a 
rough wooden moulding, was hidden by a paper screen repre¬ 
senting the Good Shepherd with a sheep on his shoulder. In 
this way, doubtless, one of the family of the mayor, or of the 
justice of the peace, endeavored to express his acknowledg¬ 
ments of the care bestowed on his training. 

The state of the house was something piteous. The walls, 
which had once been lime-washed, were discolored here and 
there, and rubbed and darkened up to the height of a man’s 
head. The wooden staircase, with its heavy balustrades, 


THE CUEA of MOJVTAGNAC. 


93 


neatly kept though it was, looked as though it must totter if 
any one set foot on it. At the end of the passage, just oppo¬ 
site the front door, another door stood open, giving the Abbe 
Gabriel an opportunity of surveying the kitchen garden, shut 
in by the wall of the old rampart, built of the white crumb¬ 
ling stone of the district. Fruit trees in full bearing had been 
trained espalier-fashion along this side of the garden, but the 
long trellises were falling to pieces, and the vine-leaves were 
covered with blight. 

The abbe went back through the house, and walked along 
the paths in the front garden. Down below the magnificent 
wide view of the valley was spread out before his eyes, a sort 
of oasis on the edge of the great plain, which, in the light 
morning mists, looked something like a waveless sea. Behind, 
and rather to one side, the great forest stretched away to the 
horizon, the bronzed mass making a contrast with the plains, 
and on the other hand the church and the castle perched on 
the crag stood sharply out against the blue sky. As the 
Abbe Gabriel paced the tiny paths among the box-edged 
diamonds, circles, and stars, crunching the gravel beneath his 
boots, he looked from point to point at the scene; over the 
village, where already a few groups of gazers had formed to 
stare at him, at the valley in the morning light, the quick-set 
hedges that marked the ways, the little river flowing under its 
willows, in such contrast with the infinite of the plains. 
Gradually his impressions changed the current of his thoughts. 
He admired the quietness, he felt the influences of the pure 
air, of the peace inspired by a glimpse of a life of biblical 
simplicity; and with these came a dim sense of the beauty of 
that life. He went back again to look at its details with a 
more serious curiosity. 

A little girl, left in charge of the house no doubt, but busy 
pilfering in the garden, came back at the sound of a man’s 
shoes creaking on the flagged pavement of the ground-floor 
rooms. In her confusion at being caught with fruit in her 


94 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


hand and between her teeth, she made no answer whatever to 
the questions put to her by this abbe—young, handsome, 
daintily arrayed. The child had never believed it possible 
that such an abbe could exist—radiant in fine lawn, neat as a 
new pin, and dressed in fine black cloth without a speck or a 
crease. 

M. Bonnet ? ” she echoed at last. “ M. Bonnet is saying 
mass, and Mile. Ursule is gone to the church.” 

The covered passage from the house to the sacristy had 
escaped the Abbe Gabriel’s notice ; so he went down the path 
again to enter the church by the principal door. The church 
porch was a sort of pent-house facing the village, set at the 
top of a flight of worn and disjointed steps, overlooking a 
square below; planted with the great elm trees which date 
from the time of the Protestant Sully, and full of channels 
washed by the rains. 

The church itself, one of the poorest in France, where 
churches are sometimes very poor, was not unlike those huge 
barns which boast a roof above the door, supported by brick 
pillars or tree-trunks. Like the parsonage house, it was built 
of rubble, the square tower being roofed with round tiles; but 
nature had covered the bare walls with the richest tracery 
mouldings, and made them fairer still with color and light and 
shade, carving her lines and disposing her masses, showing 
all the craftsman’s cunning of a Michel Angelo in her work. 
The ivy clambered over both sides, its sinewy stems clung to 
the walls till they were covered, beneath the green leaves, with 
as many veins as any anatomical diagram. Under this mantle, 
wrought by time to hide the wounds which time had made, 
damasked by autumn flowers that grew in the crevices, nestled 
the singing birds. The rose window in the west front was 
bordered with blue harebells, like the first page of some richly- 
painted missal. There were fewer flowers on the north side, 
which communicated with the parsonage, though even there 
there were patches of crimson moss on the gray stone, but 


THE CUR£ of MONTAGNAC. 


95 


the south wall and the apse were covered with many-colored 
blossoms; there were a few saplings rooted in the cracks, 
notably an almond-tree, the symbol of hope. Two giant firs 
grew up close to the wall of the apse, and served as lightning- 
conductors. A low ruinous wall repaired and maintained at 
elbow height with fallen fragments of its own masonry ran 
round the churchyard. In the midst of the space stood an iron 
cross mounted on a stone pedestal, strewn with sprigs of box 
blessed at Easter, a reminder of a touching Christian rite, now 
fallen into disuse except in country places. Only in little 
villages and hamlets does the priest go at Eastertide to bear to 
his dead the tidings of the Resurrection—You will live again 
in happiness.” Here and there above the grass-covered 
graves rose a rotten wooden cross. 

The inside was in every way in keeping with the pictur¬ 
esque neglect outside of the poor church, where all the orna¬ 
ment had been given by time, grown charitable for once. 
Within, your eyes turned at once to the roof. It was lined 
with chestnut-wood and sustained at equal distances by strong 
king-posts set on cross-beams; age had imparted to it the 
richest tones which old woods can take in Europe. The four 
walls were lime-washed and bare of ornament. Poverty had 
made unconscious iconoclasts of these worshipers. 

Four pointed windows in the side walls let in the light 
through their leaded panes ; the floor was of brick; the seats, 
wooden benches. The tomb-shaped altar bore for ornament a 
great crucifix, beneath which stood a tabernacle in walnut- 
wood (its mouldings brightly polished and clean), eight 
candlesticks (the candles thriftily made of painted wood), and 
a couple of china vases full of artificial flowers, things that a 
broker’s man would have declined to look at, but which must 
serve for God. Tlie lamp in the shrine was simply a floating- 
light, like a night-light, set in an old silver-plated holy water 
stoup, hung from the ceiling by silken cords brought from the 
wreck of some chateau. The baptismal fonts were of wood 


96 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


like the pulpit, and a sort of cage where the church-wardens 
sat—the patricians of the place. The shrine in the Lady 
Chapel offered to the admiration of the public two colored 
lithographs framed in a narrow gilded frame. The altar had 
been painted white, and adorned with artificial flowers 
planted in gilded wooden flower-pots set out on a white 
altar-cloth edged with shabby yellowish lace. 

But at the end of the church a long window covered with 
a red cotton curtain produced a magical effect. The lime- 
washed walls caught a faint rose-tint from that glowing crim¬ 
son ; it was as if some thought divine shone from the altar to 
fill the poor place with warmth and light. On one wall of 
the passage which led into the sacristy the patron saint of the 
village had been carved in wood and painted—a St. John the 
Baptist and his sheep, an execrable daub. Yet, in spite of the 
bareness and poverty of the church, there was about the whole 
a subdued harmony which appeals to those whose spirits have 
been finely touched, a harmony of the visible and invisible em¬ 
phasized by the coloring. The rich dark-brown tints of the 
wood made an admirable relief to the pure white of the walls, 
and both blended with the triumphant crimson of the chancel 
window, an austere trinity of color which recalled the great 
doctrine of the Catholic Church. 

If surprise was the first feeling called forth by the sight of 
this miserable house of God, pity and admiration followed 
quickly upon it. Did it not express the poverty of those who 
worshiped there? Was it not in keeping with the quaint 
simplicity of the parsonage? And it was clean and carefully 
kept. You breathed, as it were, an atmosphere of the simple 
virtues of the fields; nothing within spoke of neglect. 
Primitive and homely though it was, it was clothed in prayer; 
a soul pervaded it which you felt, though you could not 
explain how. 

The Abbe Gabriel slipped in softly, so as not to interrupt 
the meditations of two groups on the front benches before the 


THE CURi OF MONTAGNAC. 


9ft 


high-altar, which was railed off from the nave by a balustrade 
of the inevitable chestnut-wood, roughly made enough, and 
covered with a white cloth for the communion. Just above 
the space hung the lamp. Some score of peasant-folk on 
either side were so deeply absorbed in passionate prayer, that 
they paid no heed to the stranger as he walked up the church 
in the narrow gangway between the rows of benches. As the 
Abb6 Gabriel stood beneath the lamp, he could see into the 
two chancels which completed the cross of the ground-plan; 
one of them led to the sacristy, the other to the churchyard. 
It was in this latter, near the graves, that a whole family clad 
in black were kneeling on the brick floor, for there were no 
benches in this part of the church. The abbe bent before 
the altar on the step of the balustrade and knelt to pray, 
giving a side glance at this sight, which was soon explained. 
The Gospel was read ; the cur^ took off his chasuble and 
came down from the altar towards the railing; and the abb6, 
who had foreseen this, slipped away and stood close to the 
wall before M. Bonnet could see him. The clock struck ten. 

‘‘ My brethren,” said the cure in a faltering voice, “ even 
at this moment, a child of this parish is paying his forfeit to 
man’s justice by submitting to its extreme penalty. We offer 
the holy sacrifice of the mass for the repose of his soul* Let 
us all pray together to God to beseech Him not to forsake 
that child in his last moments, to entreat that repentance here 
on earth may find in heaven the mercy which has been refused 
to it here below. The ruin of this unhappy child, on whom 
we had counted most surely to set a good example, can only 

be attributed to a lapse from religious principles-” 

The cure was interrupted by the sound of sobbing from the 
group of mourners in the transept; and by the paroxysm of 
grief the young priest knew that this was the Tascheron family, 
though he had never seen them before. The two foremost 
among them were old people of seventy years at least. Their 
faces, swarthy as a Florentine bronze, were covered with deep 
7 



THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


impassive lines. Both of them, in their old patched garments, 
stood like statues close against the wall; evidently this was 
the condemned man’s grandfather and grandmother. Their 
red glassy eyes seemed to shed tears of blood ; the old arms 
trembled so violently that the sticks on which they leaned 
made a faint sound of scratching on the bricks. Behind them 
the father and mother, their faces hidden in their handker¬ 
chiefs, burst into tears. About the four heads of the family 
knelt two married daughters with their husbands, then three 
sons, stupefied with grief. Five kneeling little ones, the oldest 
not more than seven years of age, understood nothing prob¬ 
ably of all that went on, but looked and listened with the 
apparently torpid curiosity, which in the peasant is often a 
process of observation carried (so far as the outward and visi¬ 
ble is concerned) to the highest possible pitch. Last of all 
came the poor girl Denise, who had been imprisoned by jus¬ 
tice, the martyr to sisterly love; she was listening with an 
expression which seemed to betoken incredulity and straying 
thoughts. To her it seemed impossible that her brother should 
die. Her face was a wonderful picture of another face, that of 
one among the three Marys who could not believe that Christ 
was dead, though she had shared the agony of His passion. 
Pale and dry-eyed, as is the wont of those who have watched 
for many nights, her f’*eshness had been withered more by 
sorrow than by work in the fields; but she still kept the 
beauty of a country-girl, the full plump figure, the shapely 
red arms, a perfectly round face, and clear eyes, glittering at 
that moment with the light of despair in them. Her throat, 
firm-fleshed and white below the line of sunburned brow, in¬ 
dicated the rich tissue and fairness of the skin beneath the 
stuff. The two married daughters were weeping; their hus¬ 
bands, patient tillers of the soil, were grave and sad. None 
of the three sons in their sorrow raised their eyes from the 
ground. 

Only Denise and her mother showed any sign of rebellion 


THE CURi: OF MONT&GNAC. fid 

in the harrowing picture of resignation and despairing anguish. 
The sympathy and sincere and pious commiseration felt by 
the rest of the villagers for a family so much respected had 
lent the same expression to all faces, an expression which be¬ 
came a look of positive horror when they gathered from the 
cure’s words that even in that moment the knife would fall. 
All of them had known the young man from the day of his 
birth, and doubtless all of them believed him to be incapable 
of committing the crime laid to his charge. The sobbing 
which broke in upon the simple and brief address grew so 
vehement that the cure’s voice suddenly ceased, and he in¬ 
vited those present to fervent prayer. 

There was nothing in this scene to surprise a priest, but 
Gabriel de Rastignac was too young not to feel deeply moved 
by it. He had not as yet put priestly virtues in practice; he 
knew that a different destiny lay before him ; that it would 
never be his duty to go forth into the social breaches where 
the heart bleeds at the sight of suffering on every side; his 
lot would be cast among the upper ranks of the clergy which 
keep alive the spirit of sacrifice, represent the highest intelli¬ 
gence of the Church, and, when occasion calls for it, display 
these same virtues of the village cure on the largest scale, like 
the great bishops of Marseilles and Meaux, the archbishops of 
Arles and Cambrai. The poor peasants were praying and 
weeping for one who (as they believed) was even then going 
to his death in a great public square, before a crowd of people 
assembled from all parts to see him die, the agony of death 
made intolerable for him by the weight of shame ; there was 
something very touching in this feeble counterpoise of sym¬ 
pathy and prayer from a few, opposed to the cruel curiosity of 
the rabble and the curses, not undeserved. The poor church 
heightened the pathos of the contrast. 

The Abbe Gabriel was tempted to go over to the Tascher- 
ons and cry, “Your son, your brother has been reprieved ! ” 
but he shrank from interrupting the mass; he knew, more- 


100 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


over, that it was only a reprieve, the execution was sure to 
take place sooner or later. But he could not follow the ser¬ 
vice ; in spite of himself, he began to watch the pastor of 
whom the miracle of conversion was expected. 

Out of the indications in the parsonage house, Gabriel de 
Rastignac had drawn a picture of M. Bonnet in his own 
mind: He would be short and stout, he thought, with a red, 
powerful face, a rough workingman, almost like one of the 
peasants themselves, and tanned by the sun. The reality was 
very far from this; the Abbe Gabriel found himself in the 
presence of an equal. M. Bonnet was short, slender, and 
weakly-looking; yet it was none of these characteristics, but 
an impassioned face, such a face as we imagine for an apostle, 
which struck you at a first glance. In shape it was almost 
triangular; starting from the temples on either side of a broad 
forehead, furrowed with wrinkles, the meagre outlines of the 
hollow cheeks met at a point in the chin. In that face, over¬ 
cast by an ivory tint like the wax of an altar candle, blazed 
two blue eyes, full of the light of faith and the fires of a living 
hope. Along, slender, straight nose divided it into two equal 
parts. The wide mouth spoke even when the full, resolute 
lips were closed, and the voice which issued thence was one 
of those which go to the heart. The chestnut hair, thin, 
smooth, and fine, denoted a poor physique, poorly nour¬ 
ished. The whole strength of the man lay in his will. Such 
were his personal characteristics. In any other such short, 
hands might have indicated a bent towards material pleasures; | 
perhaps he too, like Socrates, had found evil in his nature to 
subdue. His thinness was ungainly, his shoulders protruded 
too much, and he seemed to be knock-kneed; his bust was so 
over-developed in comparison with his limbs that it gave him 
something of the appearance of a hunchback without the 
actual deformity ; altogether, to an ordinary observer, his ap¬ 
pearance was not prepossessing. Only those who know the 
miracles of thought and faith and art can recognize and rev- 


THE CURi: OF mojvtAgnac. 


101 


erence the light that burns in a martyr’s eyes, the pallor of 
steadfastness, the voice of love—all traits of the Cur6 Bonnet. 
Here was a man worthy of that early Church which no longer 
exists save in the pages of the “ Martyrology ” and in pictures 
of the sixteenth century; he bore unmistakably the seal of 
human greatness which most nearly approaches the divine; 
conviction had set its mark on him, and a conviction brings 
a salient indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest 
human clay; the devout worshiper at any shrine reflects some¬ 
thing of its golden glow; even as the glory of a noble love 
shines like a sort of light from a woman’s face. Conviction 
is human will come to its full strength; and being at once the 
cause and the effect, conviction impresses the most indifferent, 
it is a kind of mute eloquence which gains a hold upon the 
masses. 

As the cut6 came down from the altar, his eyes fell on the 
Abbe Gabriel, whom he recognized ; but when the bishop’s 
secretary appeared in the sacristy, he found no one there but 
Ursule. Her master had already given his orders. Ursule, 
a woman of canonical age, asked the Abbe de Rastignac to 
follow her along the passage through the garden. 

“ Monsieur le Cut€ told me to ask you whether you had 
breakfasted, sir,” she said. ‘‘ You must have started out from 
Limoges very early this morning to be here by ten o’clock, 
so I will set about getting breakfast ready. Monsieur I’Abb^ 
will not find the bishop’s table here, but we will do our best. 
M. Bonnet will not be long; he has gone to comfort those 
poor souls—the Tascherons. Something very terrible is hap¬ 
pening to-day to one of their sons.” 

But where do the poor people live?” the Abbe Gabriel 
put in at length. I must take M. Bonnet back to Limoges 
with me at once by the bishop’s orders. The unhappy man 
is not to be executed to-day; his lordship has obtained a re¬ 
prieve-” 

‘*Ah!” cried Ursule, her tongue itching to spread the 



102 


THE COUNTRY TARS ON. 


news. “ There will be plenty of time to take that comfort to 
the poor things whilst I am getting breakfast ready. The 
Tascherons live at the other end of the village. You follow 
the path under the terrace, that will take you to the house.” 

As soon as the Abbe Gabriel was fairly out of sight, Ursule 
went down herself to take the tidings to the village, and to 
obtain the things needed for breakfast. 

The cur6 had learned, for the first time, at the church of a 
desperate resolve on the part of the Tascherons, made since 
the appeal had been rejected. They would leave the district; 
they had already sold all they had, and that very morning the 
money was to be paid down. Formalities and unforeseen 
delays had retarded the sale; they had been forced to stay in 
the countryside after Jean-Fran^ois was condemned, and every 
day had been for them a cup of bitterness to drink. The 
news of the plan, carried out so secretly, had only transpired 
on the eve of the day fixed for the execution. The Tascherons 
had meant to leave the place before the fatal day; but the 
purchaser of their property was a stranger to the canton, a 
Correzien to whom their motives were indifferent, and he on 
his own part had found some difficulty in getting the money 
together. So the family had endured the utmost of their 
misery. So strong was the feeling of their disgrace in these 
simple folk who had never tampered with conscience, that 
grandfather and grandmother, daughters and sons-in-law, 
father and mother, and all who bore the name of Tascheron, 
or were connected with them, were leaving the place. Every 
one in the commune was sorry that they should go, and the 
mayor had gone to the cur6, entreating him to use his influ¬ 
ence with the poor mourners. 

As the law now stands, the father is no longer responsible 
for his son’s crime, and the father’s guilt does not attach to 
his children, a condition of things in keeping with other 
emancipations which have weakened the paternal power, and 
contributed to the triumph of that individualism which is 


THE CURi: OF MONTilGNAC, 


103 


eating the heart of society in our days. The thinker who 
looks to the future sees the extinction of the spirit of the 
family; those who drew up the new code have set in its place 
equality and independent opinion. The family will always 
be the basis of society; and now the faftiily, as it used to be, 
exists no longer, it has come of necessity to be a temporary 
arrangement, continually broken up and reunited only to be 
separated again ; the links between the future and the past are 
destroyed, the family of an older time has ceased to exist in 
France. Those who proceeded to the demolition of the old 
social edifice were logical when they decided that each mem¬ 
ber of the family should inherit equally, lessening the authority 
of the father, making of each child the head of a new house¬ 
hold, suppressing great responsibilities; but is the social 
system thus re-edified as solid a structure, with its laws of 
yesterday unproved by long experience, as the old monarchy 
was in spite of its abuses? With the solidarity of the family, 
society has lost that elemental force which Montesquieu dis¬ 
covered and called “honor." Society has isolated its mem¬ 
bers the better to govern them, and has divided in order to 
weaken. The social system reigns over so many units, an 
aggregation of so many ciphers, piled up like grains of wheat 
in a heap. Can the general welfare take the place of the 
welfare of the family ? Time holds the answer to this great 
enigma. And yet—the old order still exists, it is so deeply 
rooted that you find it most alive among the people. It is 
still an active force in remote districts where “prejudice," as 
it is called, likewise exists; in old-world nooks where all the 
members of a family suffer for the crime of one, and the chil¬ 
dren for the sins of their fathers. 

It was this belief which made their own countryside intoler¬ 
able to the Tascherons. Their profoundly religious natures had 
brought them to the church that morning, for how was it pos¬ 
sible to stay away when the mass was said for their son, and 
prayer offered that God might bring him to a repentance 


104 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


which should reopen eternal life to him ? and, moreover, must 
they not take leave of the village altar? But, for all that, 
their plans were made; and when the cure, who followed 
them, entered the principal house, he found the bundles made 
up, ready for the journey. The purchaser was waiting with 
the money. The notary had just made out the receipt. Out 
in the yard, in front of the house, stood a country cart ready 
to take the old people and the money and Jean-Frangois’ 
mother. The rest of the family meant to set out on foot that 
night. 

The young abbe entered the room on the ground floor 
where the whole family were assembled, just as the cure of 
Mont^gnac had exhausted all his eloquence. The two old 
people seemed to have ceased to feel from excess of grief; 
they were crouching on their bundles in a corner of the room, 
gazing round them at the old house, which had been a family 
possession from father to son, at the familiar furniture, at the 
man who had bought it all, and then at each other, as who 
should say, “ Who would have thought that we should ever 
have come to this?” For a long time past the old people 
had resigned their authority to their son, the prisoner’s father; 
and now, like old kings after their abdication, they played the 
passive part of subjects and children. Tascheron stood 
upright listening to the cure, to whom he gave answers in a 
deep voice by monosyllables. He was a man of forty-eight 
or thereabouts, with a fine face, such as served Titian for his 
apostles. It was a trustworthy face, gravely honest and 
thoughtful; a severe profile, a nose at right angles with the 
brows, blue eyes, a noble forehead, regular features, dark, 
crisped, stubborn hair, growing in the symmetrical fashion 
which adds a charm to a visage bronzed by a life of work in 
the open air—this was the present head of the house. It was 
easy to see that the cure’s arguments were shattered against 
that resolute will. 

Denise was leaning against the bread hutch, watching the 


THE CUE A OF M0N7\&GNAC. 


105 


notary, who used it as a writing-table; they had given him 
the grandmother’s armchair. The man who had bought the 
place sat beside the scrivener. The two married sisters 
were laying the cloth for the last meal which the old folk 
would offer or partake of in the old house and in their own 
country before they set out to live beneath alien skies. The 
men of the family half-stood, half-sat, propped against the 
large bedstead with the green serge curtains, while Tascheron’s 
wife, their mother, was whisking an omelette by the fire. The 
grandchildren crowded about the doorway, and the pur¬ 
chaser’s family were outside. 

Out of the window you could see the garden, carefully cul¬ 
tivated, stocked with fruit trees; the two old people had 
planted them—every one. Everything about them, like the 
old smoke-begrimed room with its black rafters, seemed to 
share in the pent-up sorrow, which could be read in so many 
different expressions on the different faces. The meal was 
being prepared for the notary, the purchaser, the children, 
and the men ; neither the father, nor mother, nor Denise, nor 
her sisters cared to satisfy their hunger, their hearts were too 
heavily oppressed. There was a lofty and heart-rending 
resignation in this last performance of the duties of country 
hospitality—the Tascherons, men of an ancient stock, ended 
as people usually begin, by doing the honors of their house. 

The bishop’s secretary was impressed by the scene, so simple 
and natural, yet so solemn, which met his eyes as he came to 
summon the cm€ of Mont^gnac to do the bishop’s bidding. 

The good man’s son is still alive,” Gabriel said, address¬ 
ing the cure. 

At the words, which every one heard in the prevailing 
silence, the two old people sprang to their feet as if the trumpet 
had sounded for the last judgment. The mother dropped her 
frying-pan into the fire. A cry of joy broke from Denise. 
All the others seemed to be turned to stone in their dull 


amazement. 


106 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Jean-Francois is pardoned!''' The cry came at that 
moment as from one voice from the whole village, who rushed 
up to the Tascherons’ house. “It is his lordship the bishop.’* 

“ I was sure of his innocence ! ” exclaimed the mother. 

“ The purchase holds good all the same, doesn’t it? ” asked 
the buyer, and the notary answered him by a nod. 

In a moment the Abbe Gabriel became the point of interest, 
all eyes were fixed on him; his face was so sad that it was 
suspected that there was some mistake, but he could not bear 
to correct it, and went out with the cur6. Outside the house 
he dismissed the crowd by telling those who came round 
about him that there was no pardon, only a reprieve, and a 
dismayed silence at once succeeded to the clamor. Gabriel 
and the cure turned into the house again, and saw a look of 
anguish on all the faces—the sudden silence in the village had 
been understood. 

“ Jean-Fran^ois has not received his pardon, my friends,” 
said the young abb6, seeing that the blow had been struck, 
“but my lord bishop’s anxiety for his soul is so great that he 
has put off the execution that your son may not perish to all 
eternity at least.” 

“Then is he living?” cried Denise. 

The abbe took the cur6 aside and told him of his parish¬ 
ioner’s impiety, of the consequent peril to religion, and what 
it was that the bishop expected of the cur6 of Mont^gnac. 

“ My lord bishop requires my death,” returned the cure. 
“Already I have refused to go to this unhappy boy when his 
afflicted family asked me. The meeting and the scene there 
afterwards would shatter me like glass. Let every man do his 
work. The weakness of my system, or rather the oversensi¬ 
tiveness of my nervous organization, makes it out of the 
question for me to fulfill these duties of our ministry. I am 
still a country parson that I may serve my like, in a sphere 
where nothing more is demanded of me in a Christian life 
than I can accomplish. I thought very carefully over this 








m ■ 

‘ '^• ‘- l(WI«. ■„ 5 " 



i:.‘; . 


V/,. 




•>' 


\t^. 




• r 



■:!VWV, 

“- I.‘, f “ ' ' . _ 




1 > 




■ . • . V .'t^; ' ■ >* 


r ''7:*' 


>/* 


i v^ -" " , ; - i. * ^ 

.,*: ; / '■ ‘/u?> 

'l'^ 

^ ^ M 






4.‘ r!: r 


K 




II 


■.. ,J.? ;. - 


. • J ' 0 

ri 




•Tt*if ’^ry, 






**-s 

% 


.4* 


eT' « ' ' 5 






tv., '’^.*4“ 





1*^ 




. i VI 

__S 

■’ 

.';■». ’ ■./' -^fiit ) • 






t* V 


• >V' 


w-»^r. ■ ■’ /p >'>- 1 '^'- < 

■ Vr 'f'- : f \ '■’ ••.' V 





% > 


• » 


.* •*■ » 


•\ -1 

S' ,(V:.!V..* V 


E: 


^4 


e: 


'iv * .*,<» 




\ 


E, 





, I 




- r :f ■'. . 

' -.'Li 




i\ ■ ■•'■*jf/V It 








m 



























































If 




i 


I 


•4 


i 






V 



V 

I 

i ♦ 




i 

‘ f • 

I "AHl SAVE HIS SOUL AT LEASTl" 

\ 

I 

■ 









THE CURi: OF montAgjvac. 


107 


matter, and tried to satisfy these good Tascherons and to do 
my duty towards this poor boy of theirs ; but at the bare 
thought of mounting the cart with him, the mere idea of 
being present while the preparations for death were being 
made, a deadly chill runs through my veins. No one would 
ask it of a mother; and remember, sir, he is a child of my 
poor church-” 

“Then you refuse to obey the bishop’s summons?” asked 
the Abbe Gabriel. 

M. Bonnet looked at him. 

“ His lordship does not know the state of my health,” 
he said, “ nor does he know that my nature rises in revolt 
against-” 

“There are times when, like Belzunce at Marseilles, we are 
bound to face a certain death,” the Abb6 Gabriel broke in. 

Just at that moment the cure felt that a hand pulled his 
cassock; he heard sobs, and, turning, saw the whole family 
on their knees. Old and young, parents and children, men 
and women, held out their hands to him imploringly; all the 
voices united in one cry as he showed his flushed face. 

“ Ah ! save his soul at least! ” 

It was the old grandmother who had caught at the skirt of 
his cassock and was bathing it with tears. 

“ I will obey, sir-” No sooner were the words uttered 

than the cur6 was forced to sit down ; his knees trembled 
under him. The young secretary explained the nature of 
Jean-Fran 9 ois’ frenzy. 

“ Do you think that the sight of his younger sister might 
shake him?” he added, as he came to an end. 

“Yes, certainly,” returned the cur6. “Denise, you will 
go with us.” 

“So shall I,” said the mother. 

“No!” shouted the father. “That boy is dead to us. 
You know that. Not one of us shall see him.” 

“ Do not stand in the way of his salvation,” said the 



108 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


young abbe. ‘‘ If you refuse us the means of softening him, 
you take the responsibility of his soul upon yourself. In his 
present state his death may reflect more discredit on his family 
than his life.” 

She shall go,” said the father. “She always interfered 
when I tried to correct my son, and this shall be her punish¬ 
ment.” 

The Abbe Gabriel and M. Bonnet went back together to 
the parsonage. It was arranged that Denise and her mother 
should be there at the time when the two ecclesiastics should 
set out for Limoges. As they followed the footpath along the 
outskirts of Upper Montdgnac, the younger man had an 
opportunity of looking more closely than heretofore in the 
church at this country parson, so highly praised by the vicar- 
general. He was favorably impressed almost at once by his 
companion’s simple, dignified manners, by the magic of his 
voice, and by the words he spoke, in keeping with the voice. 
The cure had been but once to the palace since the bishop 
had taken Gabriel de Rastignac as his secretary, so that he 
had scarcely seen the favorite destined to be a bishop some 
day; he knew that the secretary had great influence, and yet 
in the dignified kindness of his manner there was a certain 
independence, as of the cure whom the Church permits to be 
in some sort a sovereign in his own parish. 

As for the young abb6, his feelings were so far from appear¬ 
ing in his face that they seemed to have hardened it into 
severity ; his expression was not chilly, it was glacial. 

A man who could change the disposition and manners of a 
whole countryside necessarily possessed some faculty of ob¬ 
servation, and was more or less of a physiognomist; and even 
had the cure been wise only in well-doing, he had just given 
proof of an unusually keen sensibility. The coolness with 
which the bishop’s secretary met his advances and responded 
to his friendliness struck him at once. He could only account 
for this reception by some secret dissatisfaction on the other’s 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC, 


109 


part, and looked back over his conduct, wondering how he 
could have given offense, and in what the offense lay. There 
was a short embarrassing silence, broken by the Abbe de 
Rastignac. 

‘‘You have a very poor church. Monsieur le Cure,” he 
remarked, aristocratic insolence in his tones and words. 

“It is too small,” answered M. Bonnet. “For great 
church festivals the old people sit on benches round the 
porch, and the younger ones stand in a circle in the square 
down below; but they are so silent that those outside can 
hear.” 

Gabriel was silent for several moments. 

“ If the people are so devout, why do you leave the church 
so bare?” he asked at length. 

“Alas ! sir, I cannot bring myself to spend money on the 
building when the poor need it. The poor are the church. 
Besides, I should not fear a visitation from my lord bishop at 
the Fdte-Dieu I Then the poor give the church such things 
as they have! Did you notice the nails along the walls ? 
They fix a sort of wire trellis work to them, which the women 
cover with bunches of flowers; the whole church is dressed in 
flowers, as it were, which keep fresh till the evening. My 
poor church, which looked so bare to you, is adorned like a 
bride, and fragrant with sweet scents; the ground is strewn 
with leaves, and a path in the midst for the passage of the 
Holy Sacrament is carpeted with rose petals. For that one 
day I need not fear comparison with Saint Peter’s at Rome. 
The Holy Father has his gold, and I my flowers; to each his 
miracle. Ah ! the township of Montegnac is poor, but it is 
Catholic. Once upon a time they used to rob travelers, now 
any one who passes through the place might drop a bag full 
of money here, and he would find it when he returned 
home.” 

“Such a result speaks strongly in your praise,” said 
Gabriel. 


no 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


I have had nothing to do with it,” answered the cur6, 
flushing at this incisive epigram. “ It has been brought about 
by the Word of God and the sacramental bread.” 

Bread somewhat brown,” said the Abb6 Gabriel, smiling. 

“White bread is only suited to the rich,” said the cure 
humbly. 

The abb6 took both M. Bonnet’s hands in his and grasped 
them cordially. 

“ Pardon me. Monsieur le Cure,” he said ; and in a moment 
the reconciliation was completed by a look in the beautiful 
blue eyes that went to the depths of the cure’s soul. 

“ My lord bishop recommended me to put your patience 
and humility to the proof, but I can go no farther. After this 
little while I see how greatly you have been wronged by the 
praises of the Liberal party.” 

Breakfast was ready. Ursule had spread the white cloth, 
and set new-laid eggs, butter, honey and fruit, cream and 
coffee, among bunches of flowers on the old-fashioned table 
in the old-fashioned sitting-room. The window that looked 
out upon the terrace stood open, framed about with green 
leaves. Clematis grew about the ledge—white starry blossoms, 
with tiny sheaves of golden crinkled stamens at their hearts 
to relieve the white. Jessamine climbed up one side of the 
window, and nasturtiums on the other ; above it, a trail of 
vine, turning red even now, made a rich setting, which no 
sculptor could hope to render, so full of grace was that lace- 
work of leaves outlined against the sky. 

“ You will find life here reduced to its simplest terms,” said 
the cur6, smiling, though his face did not belie the sadness of 
his heart. “If we had known that you were coming—‘and 
who could have foreseen the events which have brought you 
here ?—Ursule would have had some trout for you from the 
torrent; there is a trout-stream in the forest, and the fish are 
excellent ; but I am forgetting that this is August, and that 
the Gabou will be dry ! My head is very much confused——” 


THE CURE OF MONtAgNAC. 


Ill 


“Are you very fond of this place?” asked the abb6. 

“ Yes. If God permits, I shall die cure of Montegnac. 
I could wish that other and distinguished men, who have 
thought to do better by becoming lay philanthropists, had 
taken this way of mine. Modern philanthropy is the bane 
of society j the principles of the Catholic religion are the one 
remedy for the evils which leaven the body social. Instead of 
describing the disease and making it worse by jeremiads, each 
one should have put his hand to the plough and entered God’s 
vineyard as a simple laborer. My task is far from being ended 
here, sir; it is not enough to have raised the moral standard 
of the people, who lived in a frightful state of irreligion when 
I first came here; I would fain die among a generation fully 
convinced.” 

“You have only done your duty,” the younger man 
retorted drily ; he felt a pang of jealousy in his heart. 

The other gave him a keen glance. 

“Is this yet another test?” he seemed to say—but aloud 
he answered humbly, “Yes. I wish every hour of my life,” 
he added, “ that every one in the kingdom would do his 
duty.” 

The deep underlying significance of those words was still 
further increased by the tone in which they were spoken. It 
was clear that here, in this year 1829, was a priest of great 
intellectual power, great likewise in the simplicity of his life ; 
who, though he did not set up his own judgment against that 
of his superiors, saw none the less clearly whither the church 
and the monarchy were going. 

When the mother and daughter had come, the abbe left 
the parsonage and went down to see if the horses had been 
put in. He was very impatient to return to Limoges. A few 
minutes later he returned to say that all was in readiness for 
their departure, and the four set out on their journey. Every 
creature in Mont6gnac stood in the road about the posthouse 
to see them go. The condemned man’s mother and sister 


m 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


said not a word; and as for the two ecclesiastics, there were 
so many topics to be avoided that conversation was difficult, 
and they could neither appear indifferent nor try to take a 
cheerful tone. Still endeavoring to discover some neutral 
ground for their talk as they traveled on, the influences of the 
great plain seemed to prolong the melancholy silence. 

“ What made you accept the position of an ecclesiastic? ” 
Gabriel asked at last out of idle curiosity, as the carriage 
turned into the high-road. 

“ I have never regarded my office as a ‘ position,’ ” the cur6 
answered simply. “ I cannot understand how any one can 
take holy orders for any save the one indefinable and all- 
powerful reason—a vocation. I know that not a few have 
become laborers in the great vineyard with hearts worn out 
in the service of the passions ; men who have loved without 
hope, or whose hopes have been disappointed ; men whose 
lives were blighted when they laid the wife or the woman 
they loved in the grave ; men grown weary of life in a world 
where in these times nothing, not even sentiments, are stable 
and secure, where doubt makes sport of the sweetest certain¬ 
ties, and belief is called superstition. 

“ Some leave political life in times when to be in power 
seems to be a sort of expiation, when those who are governed 
look on obedience as an unfortunate necessity; and very many 
leave a battlefield without standards where powers, by nature 
opposed, combine to defeat and dethrone the right. I am 
not supposing that any man can give himself to God for what 
he may gain. There are some who appear to see in the clergy 
a means of regenerating our country; but, according to my 
dim lights, the patriot priest is a contradiction in terms. The 
priest should belong to God alone. 

** I had no wish to offer to our Father, who yet accepts all 
things, a broken heart and an enfeebled will; I gave myself 
to Him whole and entire. It was a touching fancy in the old 
pagan religion which brought the victim crowned with flowers 


THE CURE OF MONTE GHAC. 


113 


to the temple of the gods for sacrifice. There is something 
in that custom that has always appealed to me. A sacrifice is 
nothing unless it is made graciously. So the story of my life 
is very simple, there is not the least touch of romance in it. 
Still, if you would like to hear a full confession, I will tell 
you all about myself. 

My family are well-to-do and almost wealthy. My father, 
a self-made man, is hard and inflexible ; he deals the same 
measure to himself as to his wife and children. I have never 
seen the faintest smile on his lips. With a hand of iron, a 
brow of bronze, and an energetic nature at once sullen and 
morose, he crushed us all—wife and children, clerks and ser¬ 
vants, beneath a savage tyranny. I think (I speak for myself 
alone) that I could have borne the life if the pressure brought 
to bear on us had been even ; but he was crotchety and 
changeable, and this fitfulness made it unbearable. We never 
knew whether we had done right or wrong, and the horrible 
suspense in which we lived at home becomes intolerable in 
domestic life. It is pleasanter to be out in the streets than in 
the house. Even as it was, if I had been alone at home, I 
could have borne all this without a murmur; but there was 
my mother, whom I loved passionately; the sight of her mis¬ 
ery and the continual bitterness of her life broke my heart; 
and if, as sometimes happened, I surprised her in tears, I was 
beside myself with rage. I was sent to school; and those 
years, usually a time of hardship and drudgery, were a sort of 
golden age for me. I dreaded the holidays. My mother her¬ 
self was glad to come to see me at the school. 

When I had finished my humanities, I went home and 
entered my father’s office, but I could only stay there a few 
months; youth was strong in me, my mind might have given 
way. 

** One dreary autumn evening my mother and I took a 
walk by ourselves along the Boulevard Bourdon, then one of 
the most depressing spots in Paris, and there I opened my 
8 


114 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


heart to her. I said that I saw no possible life for me save in 
the church. So long as my father lived I was bound to be 
thwarted in my tastes, my ideas, even in my affections. If I 
adopted the priest's cassock, he would be compelled to 
respect me, and in this way I might become a tower of 
strength to the family should occasion call for it. My mother 
cried bitterly. At that very time my older brother had 
enlisted as a common soldier, driven out of the house by the 
causes which had decided my vocation. (He became a 
general afterwards, and'fell in the battle of Leipsic.) I 
pointed out to my mother as a way of salvation for her that 
she should marry my sister (as soon as she should be old 
enough to settle in life) to a man with plenty of character, 
and look to this new family for support. 

So in 1807, under the pretext of escaping the conscrip¬ 
tion without expense to my father, and at the same time de¬ 
claring my vocation, I entered the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice 
at the age of nineteen. Within those famous old walls I 
found happiness and peace, troubled only by thoughts of 
what my mother and sister must be enduring. Things had 
doubtless grown worse and worse at home, for when they came 
to see me they upheld me in my determination. Initiated, 
it may be, by my own pain into the secret of charity, as the 
great apostle has defined it in his sublime epistle, I longed to 
bind the wounds of the poor and suffering in some out-of-the- 
way spot; and thereafter to prove, if God deigned to bless my 
efforts, that the Catholic religion, as put in practice by man, 
is the one true, good, and noble civilizing agent on earth. 

“ During those last days of my diaconate, grace doubtless 
enlightened me. Fully and freely I forgave my father, for I 
saw that through him I had found my real vocation. But my 
mother—in spite of a long and tender letter, in which I ex¬ 
plained this, and showed how the trace of the finger of God 
was visible throughout—my mother shed many tears when she 
saw my hair fall under the scissors of the church; for she 


THE CURE OF AfOJVT^GHAC. 


115 


knew how many joys I was renouncing, and did not know the 
hidden glories to which I aspired. Women are so tender¬ 
hearted. When at last I was God’s, I felt an infinite peace. 
All the cravings, the vanities, and cares that vex so many 
souls fell away from me. I thought that heaven would have 
a care for me as for a vessel of its own. I went forth into a 
world from which all fear was driven out, where the future 
was sure, where everything is the work of God—even the 
silence. This quietness of soul is one of the gifts of grace. 
My mother could not imagine what it was to take a church for 
a bride ; nevertheless, when she saw that I looked serene and 
happy, she was happy. After my ordination I came to pay a 
visit to some of my father’s relatives in Limousin, and one of 
these by accident spoke of the state of things in the Mon- 
tegnac district. With a sudden illumination like lightning 
the thought flashed through my inmost soul—‘ Behold thy 
vine! ’ And I came here. So, as you see, sir, my story is 
quite simple and uninteresting.” 

As he spoke, Limoges appeared in the rays of the sunset, 
and at the sight the two women could not keep back their 
tears. 

- Meanwhile the young man whom love in its separate guises 
had come to find, the object of so much outspoken curiosity, 
hypocritical sympathy, and very keen anxiety, was lying on 
his prison mattress in the condemned cell. A spy at the door 
was on the watch for any words that might escape him waking 
or sleeping, or in one of his wild fits of fury; so bent was 
justice upon coming at the truth, and on discovering Jean- 
Fran^ois’ accomplice as well as the stolen money, by every 
means that the wit of man could devise. 

The des Vanneaulx had the police in their interest; the 
police spies watched through the absolute silence. Whenever 
the man told off for this duty looked through the hole made 
for the purpose, he always saw the prisoner in the same atti- 


116 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


tude, bound in his strait waistcoat, his head tied up by a 
leather strap to prevent him from tearing the stuff and the 
thongs with his teeth. Jean-Fran^ois lay staring at the ceil¬ 
ing with a fixed desperate gaze, his eyes glowed, and seemed 
as if they were reddened by the full-pulsed tide of life sent 
surging through him by terrible thoughts. It was as if an 
antique statue of Prometheus had become a living man, with 
the thought of some lost joy gnawing his heart; so when the 
second avocat general came to see him, the visitor could not 
help showing his surprise at a character so dogged. At sight 
of any human being admitted into his cell, Jean-Fran^ois 
flew into a rage which exceeded everything in the doctor’s 
experience of such affections. As soon as he heard the key 
turn in the lock or the bolts drawn in the heavily-ironed door, 
a light froth came to his lips. 

In person, Jean-Fran^ois Tascheron, twenty-five years of 
age, was short but well made. His hair was stiff and crisp, 
and grew rather low on his forehead, signs of great energy. 
The clear, brilliant, yellow eyes, set rather too close together, 
gave him something the look of a bird of prey. His face was 
of the round dark-skinned type common in Central France. 
One of his characteristics confirmed Lavater’s assertion that 
the front teeth overlap in those predestined to be murderers; 
but the general expression of his face spoke of honesty, of 
simple warm-heartedness of disposition—it would have been 
nothing extraordinary if a woman had loved such a man pas¬ 
sionately. The lines of the fresh mouth, with its dazzling 
white teeth, were gracious; there was that peculiar shade in 
the scarlet of the lips which indicates ferocity held in check, 
and frequently a temperament which thirsts for pleasure and 
demands free scope for indulgence. There was nothing of 
the workman’s coarseness about him. To the women who 
watched his trial it seemed evident that it was a woman who 
had brought flexibility and softness into the fibre inured to 
toil, the look of distinction into the face of a son of the 


THE CURE OF MOHTAGHAC. 


117 


fields, and grace into his bearing. Women recognize the 
traces of love in a man, and men are quick to see in a woman 
whether (to use a colloquial phrase), “ love has passed that 
way.” 

That evening Jean-Fran9ois heard the sound as the bolts 
were withdrawn and the key was thrust into the lock; he 
turned his head quickly with the terrible smothered growl 
with which his fits of fury began; but he trembled violently 
when through the soft dusk he made out the forms of his 
mother and sister, and behind the two dear faces another— 
the cure of Montegnac. 

“ So this is what those barbarous wretches held in store for 
me! ” he said, and closed his eyes. 

Denise, with her prison experience, was suspicious of every 
least thing in the room; the spy had hidden himself, mean¬ 
ing, no doubt, to return; she fled to her brother, laid her 
tear-stained face against his, and said in his ear, Can they 
hear what we say ? ’ ’ 

should rather think they can, or they would not have 
sent you here,” he answered aloud. “I have asked as a 
favor this long while that I might not see any of my family.” 

What a way they have treated him ! ” cried the mother, 
turning to the cur^. “ My poor boy ! my poor boy ! ” She 
sank down on the foot of the mattress, and hid her face in 
the priest’s cassock. The cure stood upright beside her. ‘^I 
cannot bear to see him bound and tied up like that and put 
into that sack-” 

“ If Jean will promise me to be good and make no attempt 
on his life, and to behave well while we are with him, I will 
ask for leave to unbind him ; but I shall suffer for the slightest 
infraction of his promise.” 

“ I have such a craving to stretch myself out and move 
freely, dear M. Bonnet,” said the condemned man, his eyes 
filling with ^s^r?, “ that I give you my word I will do as you 
wish.” 


R 



118 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


The cure went out, the gaoler came, and the strait waist¬ 
coat was taken off. 

‘<You are not going to kill me this evening, are you?” 
asked the turnkey. 

Jean made no answer. 

Poor brother ! ” said Denise, bringing out a basket, which 
had been strictly searched, “there are one or two things here 
that you are fond of; here, of course, they grudge you every 
morsel you eat.” 

She brought out fruit gathered as soon as she knew that she 
might see her brother in prison, and a cake which her mother 
had put aside at once. This thoughtfulness of theirs, which 
recalled old memories, his sister’s voice and movements, the 
presence of his mother and the cure—all combined to bring 
about a reaction in Jean. He burst into tears, and for a mo¬ 
ment was completely overcome. 

“Ah! Denise,” he said, “I have not made a meal these 
six months past; I have eaten because hunger drove me to 
eat, that is all.” 

Mother and daughter went out and returned, and came and 
went. The housewifely instinct of seeing to a man’s comfort 
put heart into them, and at last they set supper before their 
poor darling. The people of the prison helped them in this, 
having received orders to do all in their power compatible 
with the safe custody of the condemned man. The des Van- 
neaulx, with unkindly kindness, had done their part towards 
securing the comfort of the man in whose power their heritage 
lay. So Jean by these means was to know a last gleam of 
family happiness—happiness overshadowed by the sombre 
gloom of the prison and death. 

“Was my appeal rejected?” he asked M. Bonnet. 

“Yes, my boy. There is nothing left to you now but to 
make an end worthy of a Christian. This life of ours is as 
nothing compared with the life which awaits us; you must 
think of your happiness in eternity. Your account with men 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 


119 


is settled by the forfeit of your life, but God requires more, a 
life is too small a thing for Him." 

“Forfeit my life?- Ah, you do not know all that I 

must leave behind." 

Denise looked at her brother, as if to remind him that pru¬ 
dence was called for even in matters of religion. 

“ Let us say nothing of that," he went on, eating fruit with 
an eagerness that denoted a fierce and restless fire within. 
“ When must I-?" 

No !no! nothing of that before me ! " cried the mother. 

“I should be easier if I knew," he said in a low voice, 
turning to the cur6. 

“The same as ever! " exclaimed M. Bonnet, and he bent 
to say in Jean’s ear—“ If you make your peace with God to¬ 
night, and your repentance permits me to give you absolution, 
it shall be to-morrow." Aloud he added, “ We have already 
gained something by calming you." 

At these last words, Jean grew white to the lips, his eyes 
contracted with a heavy scowl, his features quivered with the 
coming storm of rage. 

“ What, am I calm ? " he asked himself. Luckily his eyes 
met the tearful eyes of his sister Denise, and he regained the 
mastery over himself. 

“Ah, well," he said, looking at the cure, “I could not 
listen to any one but you. They knew well how to tame me," 
and he suddenly dropped his head on his mother’s shoulder. 

“Listen, dear," his mother said, weeping, “our dear M. 
Bonnet is risking his own life by undertaking to be with you 
on the way to"—she hesitated, and then finished—“to 
eternal life." 

And she lowered Jean’s head and held it for a few moments 
on her heart. 

“ Will he go with me?" asked Jean, looking at the cur^, 
who took it upon himself to bow his head. “ Very well, I will 
listen to him, I will do everything that he requires of me,” 




120 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘‘Promise me that you will,” said Denise, “for your soul 
must be saved ; that is what we are all thinking of. And 
then—would you have it said in Limoges and all the country 
round that a Tascheron could not die like a man ? After all, 
just think that all that you lose here you may find again in 
heaven, where forgiven souls will meet again.” 

This preternatural effort parched the heroic girl’s throat. 
Like her mother, she was silent, but she had won the victory. 
The criminal, hitherto frantic that justice had snatched away 
his cup of bliss, was thrilled with the sublime doctrine of the 
Catholic Church, expressed so artlessly by his sister. Every 
woman, even a peasant-girl like Denise Tascheron, possesses 
at need this tender tact; does not every woman love to think 
that love is eternal? Denise had touched two responsive 
chords. Awakened pride roused other qualities numbed by 
such utter misery and stunned by despair. Jean took his 
sister’s hand in his and kissed it, and held her to his heart in 
a manner profoundly significant; tenderly, but in a mighty 
grasp. 

“There,” he said, “everything must be given up ! That 
was my last heart-throb, my last thought—intrusted to you, 
Denise.” And he gave her such a look as a man gives at 
some solemn moment, when he strives to impress his whole 
soul on another soul. 

A whole last testament lay in the words and the thoughts ; 
the mother and sister, the cure and Jean, understood so well 
that these were mute bequests to be faithfully executed and 
loyally demanded that they turned away their faces to hide 
their tears and the thoughts that might be read in their eyes. 
Those few words, spoken in the death-agony of passion, were 
the farewell to fatherhood and all that was sweetest on earth 
—the earnest of a Catholic renunciation of the things of earth. 
The cure, awed by the majesty of human nature, by all its 
greatness even in sin, measured the force of this mysterious 
passion by the enormity of the crime, and raised his e^es a§ 


THE CURi OF MONTEGNAC. 121 

if to entreat God’s mercy. In that action the touching con¬ 
solation—the infinite tenderness of the Catholic faith—was 
revealed—a religion that shows itself so human, so loving, by 
the hand stretched down to teach mankind the laws of a 
higher world, so awful, so divine, by the hand held out to 
guide him to heaven. It was Denise who had just discovered 
to the cure, in this mysterious manner, the spot where the 
rock would yield the streams of repentance. Suddenly Jean 
uttered a blood-curdling cry, like some hyena caught by the 
hunters. Memories had awakened. 

No ! no! no!” he cried, falling upon his knees. “I 
want to live ! Mother, take my place. Change clothes with 
me. I could escape I Have pity 1 Have pity. Go to the 
King and tell him-” 

He stopped short, a horrible sound like the growl of a wild 
beast broke from him ; he clutched fiercely at the cure’s 
cassock. 

Go,” M. Bonnet said in a low voice, turning to the two 
women, who were quite overcome by this scene. Jean heard 
the word, and lifted his head. He looked up at his mother 
and sister, and kissed their feet. 

Let us say good-bye,” he said. Do not come back any 
more. Leave me alone with M. Bonnet; and do not be 
anxious about me now,” he added, as he clasped his mother 
and sister in a tight embrace, in which he seemed as though 
he would fain put all the life that was in him. 

“How can any one go through all this and live?” asked 
Denise as they reached the wicket. 

It was about eight o’clock in the evening when they sep¬ 
arated. The Abbe de Rastignac was waiting at the gate of 
the prison, and asked the two women for news. 

“ He will make his peace with God,” said Denise. “ If he 
has not repented already, repentance is near at hand.” 

A few minutes later the bishop learned that the Church 
would triumph in this matter, and that the condemned man 



122 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


would go to his execution with the most edifying religious 
sentiments. The public prosecutor was with his lordship, 
who expressed a wish to see the cure. It was midnight before 
M. Bonnet came. The Abbe Gabriel, who had been going 
to and fro between the palace and the prison, considered that 
the bishop’s carriage ought to be sent for him, for the poor 
man was so exhausted that he could scarcely stand. The 
thought of to-morrow’s horrible journey, the anguish of soul 
which he had witnessed, the full and entire repentance of this 
member of his flock, who broke down completely at last 
when the great forecast of eternity was put before him—all 
these things had combined to wear out M. Bonnet’s strength, 
for with his nervous temperament and electric swiftness of 
apprehension, he was quick to feel the sorrows of others as if 
they were his own. 

Souls like this beautiful soul are so open to receive the im¬ 
pressions, the sorrows, passions, and sufferings of those towards 
whom they are drawm, that they feel the pain as if it were in 
very truth their own, and this in a manner which is torture ; 
for their clearer eyes can measure the whole extent of the mis¬ 
fortune in a way impossible to those blinded by the egoism of 
love or paroxysms of grief. In this respect such a confessor 
as M. Bonnet is an artist who feels, instead of an artist who 
judges. 

In the drawing-room at the palace, where the two vicars- 
general, the public prosecutor, and M. de Granville, and the 
Abbe de Rastignac were waiting, it dawned upon M. Bonnet 
that he was expected to bring news. 

“Monsieur le Cure,” the bishop began, “have you ob¬ 
tained any confessions with which you may in confidence 
enlighten justice without failing in your duty ?” 

“ Before I gave absolution to that poor lost child, my lord, 
I was not content that his repentance should be as full and 
entire as the Church could require; I still further insisted on 
the restitution of the money.” 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 


123 


I came here to the palace about that restitution,” said the 
public prosecutor. “ Some light will be thrown on obscure 
points in the case by the way in which it is made. He cer¬ 
tainly has accomplices-” 

‘‘With the interests of man’s justice I have no concern,” 
the cure said. ‘‘ I do not know how or where the restiiulion 
will be made, but made it will be. When my lord bishop 
summoned me here to one of my own parishioners, he re¬ 
placed me in the exact conditions which give a cure in his 
own parish the rights which a bishop exercises in his diocese 
—ecclesiastical obedience and discipline apart.” 

“ Quite right,” said the bishop. ” But the point is to 
obtain a voluntary confession before justice from the con¬ 
demned man.” 

“ My mission was simply to bring a soul to God,” returned 
M. Bonnet. 

M. de Grancour shrugged his shoulders slightly, and the 
Abbe Dutheil nodded approval. 

“ Tascheron, no doubt, wants to screen some one whom 
a restitution would identify,” said the public prosecutor. 

“ Monsieur,” retorted the cure, ‘‘I know absolutely noth¬ 
ing which might either confirm or contradict your conjecture; 
and, moreover, the secrets of the confessional are inviolable.” 

“ So the restitution will be made? ” asked the man of law. 

“ Yes, monsieur,” answered the man of God. 

“ That is enough for me,” said the public prosecutor. He 
relied upon the cleverness of the police to find and follow up 
any clue, as if passion and personal interest were not keener- 
witted than any detective. 

Two days later, on a market-day, Jean-Fran^ois Tascheron 
went to his death in a manner which left all pious and politic 
souls nothing to desire. His humility and piety were exem¬ 
plary ; he kissed with fervor the crucifix which M. Bonnet 
held out to him with trembling hands. The unfortunate 



124 


THE COUNTRY PAkSOI^. 


man was closely scanned; all eyes were on the watch to 
see the direction his glances might take ; would he look up 
at one of the houses, or gaze on some face in the crowd ? 
His discretion was complete and inviolable. He met hi& 
death like a Christian, penitent and forgiven. 

The poor cure of Montegnac was taken away unconscious 
from the foot of the scaffold, though he had not so much as 
set eyes on the fatal machine. 

The next day at nightfall, three leagues away from Limoges, 
out on the high-road, and in a lonely spot, Denise Tascheron 
suddenly stopped. Exhausted though she was with physical 
weariness and sorrow, she begged her father to allow her to 
go back to Limoges with Louis-Marie Tascheron, one of her 
brothers. 

‘‘ What more do you want to do in that place? ” her father 
asked sharply, raising his eyebrows, and frowning. 

We have not only to pay the lawyer, father,” she said in 
his ear ; there is something else. The money that he hid 
must be given back.” 

*^That is only right,” said the rigorously honest man, 
fumbling in a leather purse which he carried about him. 

“ No,” Denise said swiftly, he is your son no longer; and 
those who blessed, not those who cursed him, ought to pay the 
lawyer’s fees.” 

‘‘ We will wait for you at Havre? ” her father said. 

Denise and her brother crept into the town again before it 
was day. Though the police learned later on that two of the 
Tascherons had come back, they never could discover their 
lodging. It was near four o’clock when Denise and her 
brother went to the higher end of the town, stealing along 
close to the walls. The poor girl dared not look up, lest the 
eyes which should meet hers had seen her brother’s head fall. 
First of all, she had sought out M. Bonnet, and he, unwell 
though he was, had consented to act as Denise’s father and 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 


125 


guardian for the time being. With him they went to the 
barrister, who lived in the Rue de la Comedie. 

“ Good-day, poor children,” the lawyer began, with a bow 
to M. Bonnet. “ How can I be of use to you? Perhaps you 
want me to make application for your brother’s body.” 

“No, sir,” said Denise, her tears flowing at the thought, 
which had not occurred to her; “I have come to pay our 
debt to you, in so far as money can repay an eternal debt.” 

“Sit down a moment,” said the lawyer, seeing that Denise 
and the cure were both standing. Denise turned away to draw 
from her stays two notes of five hundred francs, pinned to her 
shift. Then she sat down and handed over the bills to her 
brother’s counsel. The cure looked at the lawyer with a light 
in his eyes, which soon filled with tears. 

“ Keep it,” the barrister said ; “ keep the money yourself, 
my poor girl. Rich people do not pay for a lost cause in this 
generous way. 

“ I cannot do as you ask, sir, it is impossible,” said Denise. 

“Then the money does not come from you?” the barrister 
asked quickly. 

“ Pardon me,” she replied, with a questioning glance at 
M. Bonnet—would God be angry with her for that lie ? 

The cure kept his eyes lowered. 

“Very well,” said the barrister, and, keeping one of the 
notes in his hand, he gave the other to the cure, “ then I will 
divide it with the poor. And now, Denise, this is certainly 
mine ”—he held out the note as he spoke—“ will you give me 
your velvet ribbon and gold cross in exchange for it ? I will 
hang the cross above my chimney-piece in memory of the 
purest and kindest girl’s heart which I shall every meet with, 
I doubt not, in my career.” 

“There is no need to buy it,” cried Denise, “I will give 
it you,” and she took off her gilt cross and handed it to the 
lawyer. 

“ Very well, sir,” said the cut€, “ I accept the five hundred 


126 


THE COUNTRY TARS ON. 


francs to pay the expenses of exhuming and removing the 
poor boy’s body to the churchyard at Montegnac. Doubt¬ 
less God has forgiven him ; Jean will rise again with all my 
flock at the Last Day, when the righteous as well as the penitent 
sinner will be summoned to sit at the Father’s right hand.” 

“ So be it,” said the barrister. He took Denise’s hand and 
drew her towards him to put a kiss on her forehead, a move¬ 
ment made with another end in view. 

“My child,” he said, “ nobody at Montegnac has such a 
thing as a five-hundred franc-note ; they are rather scarce in 
Limoges; people don’t take them here without asking some¬ 
thing for changing them. So this money has been given to 
you by somebody; you are not going to tell me who it was, 
and I do not ask you, but listen to this : if you have anything 
left to do here which has any reference to your poor brother, 
mind how you set about it. M. Bonnet and you and your 
brother will all three of you be watched by spies. People 
know that your family have gone away. If anybody recog¬ 
nizes you here, you will be surrounded before you suspect it.” 

“Alas ! ” she said, “ I have nothing left to do here.” 

“She is cautious,” said the lawyer to himself, as he went 
to the door with her. “She has been warned, so let her 
extricate herself.” 

It was late September, but the days were as hot as in the 
summer. The bishop was giving a dinner-party. The local 
authorities, the public prosecutor, and the first avocat ghieral 
were among the guests. Discussions were started, which grew 
lively in the course of the evening, and it was very late before 
they broke up. Whist and backgammon, that game beloved 
of bishops, were the order of the day. It happened that 
about eleven o’clock the public prosecutor stepped out upon 
the upper terrace, and from the corner where he stood saw a 
light on the island, which the Abbe Gabriel and the bishop 
had already fixed upon as the central spot and clue to the 
inexplicable tangle about Tascheron’s crime—on Veronique’s 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 


127 


Isle of France in fact. There was no apparent reason why 
anybody should kindle a fire in the middle of the Vienne at 
that time of night—then, all at once, the idea which had 
struck the bishop and his secretary flashed upon the public 
prosecutor’s brain, with a light as sudden as that of the fire 
which shot up out of the distant darkness. 

“ What a set of great fools we have all been ! ” cried he, 
“but we have the accomplices now.” 

He went up to the drawing-room again, found out M. de 
Granville, and said a word or two in his ear; then both of 
them vanished. But the Abbe de Rastignac, courteously 
attentive, watched them go out, saw that they went towards 
the terrace, and noticed too that fire on the shore of the island. 

“It is all over with her,” thought he. 

The messengers of justice arrived on the spot—too late. 
Denise and Louis-Marie (whom his brother Jean had taught 
to dive) were there, it is true, on the bank of the Vienne at a 
place pointed out by Jean ; but Louis-Marie had already dived 
four times, and each time had brought up with him twenty 
thousand francs in gold. The first installment was secured in 
a bandana with the four corners tied up. As soon as the 
water had been wrung from the handkerchief, it was thrown 
on a great fire of dry sticks, kindled beforehand. A shawl 
contained the second, and the third was secured in a lawn 
handkerchief. Just as Denise was about to fling the fourth 
wrapper into the fire the police came up, accompanied by a 
commissary, and pounced upon a very important clue, as they 
thought, which Denise suffered them to seize without the 
slightest emotion. It was a man’s pocket-handkerchief, which 
still retained some stains of blood in spite of its long immer¬ 
sion. Questioned forthwith as to her proceedings, Denise 
said that she had brought the stolen money out of the river, as 
her brother bade her. To the commissary, inquiring why she 
had burned the wrappings, she answered that she was follow¬ 
ing out her brother’s instructions. Asked what the wrappings 


128 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


were, she replied boldly and with perfect truth, A bandana 
handkerchief, a lawn handkerchief, and a shawl.” 

The handkerchief which had just been seized belonged to 
her brother. 

This fishing expedition and the circumstances accompanying 
it made plenty of talk in Limoges. The shawl in particular 
confirmed the belief that there was a love affair at the bottom 
of Tascheron’s crime. 

He is dead, but he shields her still,” commented one lady, 
when she heard these final revelations, so cleverly rendered 
useless. 

‘‘ Perhaps there is some married man in Limoges who will 
find that he is a bandana short, but he will perforce hold his 
tongue,” said the public prosecutor, smilingly. 

“Little mistakes in one's wardrobe have come to be so 
compromising, that I shall set about verifying mine this very 
evening,” said old Mme. Ferret, smiling too. 

“ Whose are the dainty little feet that left the footmarks, 
so carefully erased ? ” asked M. de Granville. 

“Pshaw! perhaps they belong to some ugly woman,” re¬ 
turned the avocat general. 

“ She has paid dear for her slip,” remarked the Abbe de 
Grancour. 

“ Do you know what all this business goes to prove? ” put 
in the avocat general. “ It just shows how much women have 
lost through the Revolution, which obliterated social distinc¬ 
tions. Such a passion is only to be met with nowadays in a 
man who knows that there is an enormous distance between 
him and the woman he loves.” 

“You credit love with many vanities,” returned the Abbe 
Dutheil. 

“ What does Mme. Graslin think? ” asked the prefect. 

“ What would you have her think ? She was confined, as she 
told me she would be, on the day of the execution, and has seen 
nobody since; she is dangerously ill,” said M. de Granville. 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 


129 


Meanwhile, in another room in Limoges, an almost comic 
scene was taking place. The des Vanneaulx’s friends were 
congratulating them upon the restitution of their inheritance. 

Well, well,” said Mme. des Vanneaulx, “they ought to 
have let him off, poor man. It was love, and not mercenary 
motives, that brought him to it; he was neither vicious nor 
wicked.” 

“ He behaved like a thorough gentleman,” said the Sieur 
des Vanneaulx. “ If I knew where his family was, I would do 
something for them ; they are good people, those Tascherons.” 

When Mme. Graslin was well enough to rise, towards the 
end of the year 1829, after the long illness which followed 
her confinement, and obliged her to keep her bed in absolute 
solitude and quiet, she heard her husband speak of a rather 
considerable piece of business which he wanted to conclude. 
The Navarreins family thought of selling the forest of Mon- 
tegnac and the waste lands which they owned in the neighbor¬ 
hood. Graslin had not yet put into execution a clause in his 
wife’s marriage settlement, which required that her dowry 
should be invested in land j he had preferred to put her money 
out at interest through the bank, and already had doubled 
her capital. On this, Veronique seemed to recollect the name 
of Montegnac, and begged her husband to carry out the con¬ 
tract by purchasing the estate for her. 

M. Graslin wished very much to see M. Bonnet, to ask for 
information concerning the forest and lands which the Due de 
Navarreins thought of selling. The Due de Navarreins, be it 
said, foresaw the hideous struggle which the Prince de Polignac 
had made inevitable between the Liberals and the Bourbon 
dynasty; and augured the worst, for which reasons he was 
one of the boldest opponents of the Coup d’Etat. The Duke 
had sent his man of business to Limoges with instructions to 
sell, if a bidder could be found for so large a sum of money, 
for his grace recollected the Revolution of 1789 too well not 
9 


130 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


to profit by the lessons then taught to the aristocracy. It was 
this man of business who, for more than a month, had been 
at close quarters with Graslin, the shrewdest old fox in Lim¬ 
ousin, and the only man whom common report singled out as 
being able to pay down the price of so large an estate on the 
spot. 

At a word sent by the Abbe Dutheil, M. Bonnet hastened 
to Limoges and the Hotel Graslin. Veronique would have 
prayed the cure to dine with her; but the banker only allowed 
M. Bonnet to go up to his wife’s room after he had kept him 
a full hour in his private office, and obtained information 
which satisfied him so well, that he concluded his purchase 
out of hand, and the forest and domain of Montegnac became 
his (Graslin’s) for five hundred thousand francs. He acqui¬ 
esced in his wife’s wish, stipulating that this purchase and any 
outlay relating thereto should be held to accomplish the clause 
in her marriage contract as to her fortune. Graslin did this 
the more willingly because the piece of honesty now cost him 
nothing. 

At the time of Graslin’s purchase the estate consisted of the 
forest of Montegnac, some thirty thousand acres in extent, 
but too inaccessible to bring in any money, the ruined castle, 
the gardens, and some five thousand acres in the uncultivated 
plains under Montegnac. Graslin made several more pur¬ 
chases at once, so as to have the whole of the first peak of the 
Correzien range in his hands, for there the vast forest of Mon¬ 
tegnac came to an end. Since the taxes had been levied upon 
it, the Due de Navarreins had not drawn fifteen thousand 
francs a year from the manor, formerly one of the richest ten¬ 
ures in the kingdom. The lands had escaped sale when put 
up under the Convention, partly because of their barrenness, 
partly because it was a recognized fact that nothing could be 
made of them. 

When the cur6 came face to face with the woman of whom 
he had heard, a woman whose cleverness and piety were well 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 


131 


known, he started in spite of himself. At this time Veronique 
had entered upon the third period of her life, a period in 
which she was to grow greater by the exercise of the loftiest 
virtues, and become a totally different woman. To the 
Raphael’s Madonna, hidden beneath the veil of smallpox 
scars, a beautiful, noble, and impassioned woman had succeeded, 
a woman afterwards laid low by inward sorrows, from which 
a saint emerged. Her complexion had taken the sallow tint 
seen in the austere faces of abbesses of ascetic life. A 
yellowish hue had overspread the temples, grown less imperious 
now. The lips were paler, the red of the opening pomegranate 
flower had changed into the paler crimson of the Bengal rose. 
Between the nose and the corners of the eyes sorrow had worn 
two pearly channels, down which many tears had coursed in 
secret; much weeping had worn away the traces of smallpox. 
It was impossible not to fix your eyes on the spot where a net¬ 
work of tiny blue veins stood out swollen and distended with 
the full pulses that throbbed there, as if they fed the source 
of many tears. The faint brownish tinge about the eyes alone 
remained, but there were dark circles under them now, and 
wrinkles in the eyelids which told of terrible suffering. The 
lines in the hollow cheeks bore record of solemn thoughts. 
The chin, too, had shrunk, it had lost its youthful fulness of 
outline, and this scarcely to the advantage of a face which 
wore an expression of pitiless austerity, confined, however, 
solely to Veronique herself. At twenty-nine years of age her 
hair, one of her greatest beauties, had faded and grown scanty; 
she had been obliged to pull out a large quantity of white 
hair, bleached during her confinement. Her thinness was 
shocking to see. In spite of the doctor’s orders, she had per¬ 
sisted in nursing the child herself; and the doctor was not 
disposed to let people forget this when all his evil prognosti¬ 
cations were so thoroughly fulfilled. 

‘‘ See what a difference a single confinement has made in a 
woman ! ” said he. And she worships that child of hers; 


132 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


but I have always noticed that the more a child costs the 
mother, the dearer it is.” 

All that remained of youth in Veronique’s face lay in her 
eyes, wan though they were. An untamed fire flashed from 
the dark blue iris; all the life that had deserted the cold im¬ 
passive mask .of a face, expressionless now save for the chari¬ 
table look which it wore when her poorer neighbors were 
spoken of, seemed to have taken refuge there. So the curb’s 
first dismay and surprise abated somewhat as he went on to 
explain to her how much good a resident landowner might effect 
in Montegnac, and for a moment Veronique’s face grew beauti¬ 
ful, lighted up by this unexpected hope which began to shine 
in upon her. 

‘‘ I will go there,” she said. It shall be my property. I 
will ask M. Graslin to put some funds at my disposal, and I 
will enter into your charitable work with all my might. 
Montegnac shall be cultivated; we will find water somewhere 
to irrigate the waste land in the plain. You are striking the 
rock, like Moses, and tears will flow from it! ” 

The cure of Montegnac spoke of Mine. Graslin as a saint 
when his friends in Limoges asked him about her. 

The very day after the purchase was completed, Graslin 
sent an architect to Montegnac. He was determined to restore 
the castle, the gardens, terraces, and park, to reclaim the 
forest by a plantation, putting an ostentatious activity into all 
that he did. 

Two years later a great misfortune befell Mme. Graslin. 
Her husband, in spite of his prudence, was involved in the 
commercial and financial disasters of 1830. The thought of 
bankruptcy, or of losing three millions, the gains of a life¬ 
time of toil, were both intolerable' to him. The worry and 
anxiety aggravated the inflammatory disease, always lurking 
in his system, the result of impure blood. He was compelled 
to take to his bed. In Veronique a friendly feeling towards 
Graslin had developed during her pregnancy, and dealt a fatal 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 


133 


blow to the hopes of her admirer, M. de Granville. By care¬ 
ful nursing she tried to save her husband’s life, but only sue* 
ceeded in prolonging a suffering existence for a few months. 
This respite, however, was very useful to Grossetete, who, 
foreseeing the end, consulted with his old comrade, and made 
all the necessary arrangements for a prompt realization. 

In April, 1831, Monsieur Graslin died, and his widow’s de¬ 
spairing grief only sobered down into Christian resignation. 
From the first Veronique had wished to give up her whole 
fortune to her husband’s creditors; but M. Graslin’s estate 
proved to be more than sufficient. It was Grossetete who 
wound up his affairs, and two months after the settlement 
Mme. Graslin found herself the mistress of the domains of 
Montegnac and of six hundred and sixty thousand francs, all 
her own; and no blot rested on her son’s name. No one 
had lost anything through Graslin—not even his wife; and 
Francis Graslin had about a hundred thousand francs. 

Then M. de Granville, who had reason to know Veronique’s 
nature and loftiness of soul, came forward as a suitor; but, to 
the amazement of all Limoges, Mme. Graslin refused the 
newly-appointed public prosecutor, on the ground that second 
marriages were discountenanced by the Church. Grossetete, 
a man of unerring forecast and sound sense, advised Vero¬ 
nique to invest the rest of M. Graslin’s fortune and her own 
in the Funds, and effected this himself for her at once, in the 
month of July, when the three per cents, stood at fifty. So 
Francis had an income of six thousand livres, and his mother 
about forty thousand. V6ronique’s was still the greatest for¬ 
tune in the department. 

All was settled at last, and Mme. Graslin gave out that she 
meant to leave Limoges to live nearer to M. Bonnet. Again 
she sent for the cure, to consult him about his work at Mon- 
tegnac, in which she was determined to share; but he gener¬ 
ously tried to dissuade her, and to make it clear to her that 
her place was in society. 


134 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


I have sprung from the people, and I mean to return to 
them,” said she. 

The cure’s great love for his own village resisted the more 
feebly when he learned that Mine. Graslin had arranged to 
make over her house in Limoges to M. GrossetSte. Certain 
sums were due to the banker, and he took the house at its full 
value in settlement. 

Mme. Graslin finally left Limoges towards the end of Au¬ 
gust, 1831. A troop of friends gathered about her, and went 
with her as far as the outskirts of the town ; some of them 
went the whole first stage of the journey. Veronique traveled 
in a caleche with her mother; the Abbe Dutheil, recently 
appointed to a bishopric, sat opposite them with old M. Gros- 
setdte. As they went through the Place d’Aine, V^ronique’s 
emotion was almost uncontrollable ; her face contracted ; every 
muscle quivered with the pain; she snatched up her child, 
and held him tightly to her in a convulsive grasp, while La 
Sauviat tried to cover her emotion by following her example— 
it seemed that La Sauviat was not unprepared for something 
of this kind. 

Chance so ordered it that Mme. Graslin caught a glimpse 
of the house where her father had lived ; she clutched Mme. 
Sauviat’s hand, great tears filled her eyes and rolled down her 
cheeks. When Limoges was fairly left behind, she turned 
and took a last farewell glance; and all her friends noticed a 
certain look of happiness in her face. When the public 
prosecutor, the young man of five-and-twenty whom she had 
declined to marry, came up and kissed her hand with lively 
expressions of regret, the newly-made bishop noticed some¬ 
thing strange in V^ronique’s eyes: the dark pupils dilated 
till the blue became a thin ring about them. It was 
unmistakable that some violent revulsion took place within 
her. 

‘‘Now I shall never see him again,” she said in her 
mother’s ear, but there was not the slightest trace of feeling 


THE CURE OF MONTEGNAC. 135 

in the impassive old face as Mme. Sauviat received that 
confidence. 

Grossetdte, the shrewd old banker, sitting opposite, watch¬ 
ing the women with keen eyes, had not discovered that Veron- 
ique hated this man, whom for that matter she received as a 
visitor. In things of this kind a churchman is far clearer- 
sighted than other men, and the bishop surprised Veronique 
by a glance that revealed an ecclesiastic’s perspicacity. 

‘‘You have no regret in leaving Limoges?” the bishop 
said to Mme. Graslin. 

“You are leaving the town,” she replied. “And M. 
GrossetSte scarcely ever comes among us now,” she added, 
with a smile for her old friend as he said good-bye. 

The bishop went the whole of the way to Montegnac with 
Veronique. 

“I ought to have made this journey in mourning,” she 
said in her mother’s ear as they walked up the hill near Saint- 
Leonard. 

The old woman turned her crabbed, wrinkled face, and 
laid her finger on her lips; then she pointed to the bishop, 
who was giving the child a terrible scrutiny. Her mother’s 
gesture first, and yet more tlie significant expression in the 
bishop’s eyes, made Mme. Graslin shudder. The light died 
out of her face as she looked out across the wide gray stretch 
of plain before Montegnac, and melancholy overcame her. 
All at once she saw the cure coming to meet her, and made 
him take a seat in the carriage. 

“This is your domain,” said M. Bonnet, indicating the 
level waste. 


IV 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 

In a few moments the township of Montegnac came in 
sight; the hillside and the conspicuous new buildings upon it 
shone golden in the light of the sunset; it was a lovely land¬ 
scape like an oasis in the desert, with a picturesque charm of 
its own, due to the contrast with its setting. Mme. Graslin’s 
eyes began to fill with tears. The cure pointed out a broad 
white track like a scar on the hillside. 

“ That is what my parishioners have done to show their 

gratitude to their lady of the manor,” he said. “We can 

drive the whole way to the chateau. The road is finished 
now, and has not cost you a sou; we shall put in a row of 

trees beside it in two months’ time. My lord bishop can 

imagine how much toil, thought, and devotion went to the 
making of such a change.” 

“And they have done this themselves ! ” said the bishop. 

“They would take nothing in return, my lord. The 
poorest lent a hand, for they all knew that one who would be 
like a mother to them was coming to live among us.” 

There was a crowd at the foot of the hill, all the village was 
there. Guns were fired off, and mortars exploded, and then 
the two prettiest girls of Montegnac, in white dresses, came to 
offer flowers and fruit to Mme. Graslin. 

“That I should be welcomed here like this!” she cried, 
clutching M. Bonnet’s hand as if she felt that she was falling 
over a precipice. 

The crowd went up as far as the great iron gateway, 
whence Mme. Graslin could see her chateau. At first sight 
the splendor of her dwelling was a shock to her. Stone for 
building is scarce in this district, for the native granite is 
(136) 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 


137 


hard and exceedingly difficult to work; so Graslin’s architect 
had used brick for the main body of the great building, there 
being plenty of brick earth in the forest of Montegnac, and 
wood for the felling. All the woodwork and stone, in fact, 
came also from the forest and the quarries in it. But for 
these economies, Graslin must have been put to a ruinous 
expense ; but as it was, the principal outlay was for wages, 
carriage, and salaries, and the money circulating in the 
township had put new life into it. 

At a first glance the chateau stood up a huge red mass, 
scored with dark lines of mortar, and outlined with gray, for 
the facings and quoins and the string courses along each story 
were of granite, each block being cut in facets diamond 
fashion. The surface of the brick walls round the courtyard 
(a sloping oval like the courtyard of Versailles) was broken 
by slabs of granite surrounded by bosses, and set at equal dis¬ 
tances. Shrubs had been planted under the walls, with a view 
to obtaining the contrasts of their various foliage. Two hand¬ 
some iron gateways gave access on the one hand to the terrace 
which overlooked Montegnac, and on the other to a farm and 
outbuildings. The great gateway at the summit of the new 
road, which had just been finished, had a neat lodge on 
either side, built in the style of the sixteenth century. 

The facade of the chateau fronted the courtyard and faced 
the west. It consisted of three towers, the central tower 
being connected with the one on either side of it by two 
wings. The back of the house was precisely similar, and 
looked over the gardens towards the east. There was but one 
window in each tower on the side of the courtyard and gar¬ 
dens, each wing having three. The centre tower was built 
something after the fashion of a campanile, the corner-stones 
were vermiculated, and here some delicate sculptured work 
had been sparingly introduced. Art is timid in the provinces ; 
and though in 1829 some progress had been made in architec¬ 
tural ornament (thanks to certain writers), the owners of 


138 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


houses shrank at that time from an expense which lack of 
competition and scarcity of craftsmen rendered somewhat 
formidable. 

The tower at either end (three windows in depth) was 
crowned by a high-pitched roof, with a granite balustrade by 
way of decoration; each angle of the pyramid was sharply 
cut by an elegant balcony lined with lead, and surrounded by 
cast-iron railings, and an elegantly sculptured window occupy¬ 
ing each side of the roof. All the door and window cornices 
on each story were likewise ornamented with carved work 
copied from Genoese palace fronts. The three side windows 
of the southern tower looked out over Montegnac, the 
northern gave a view of the forest. 

From the eastern windows you could see beyond the gar¬ 
dens that part of Montegnac where the Tascherons had lived, 
and far down below in the valley the road which led to the 
chief town in the arrondissement. From the west front, 
which faced towards the courtyard, you saw the wide map of 
the plain stretching away on the Montegnac side to the moun¬ 
tains of the Coneze, and elsewhere to the circle of the 
horizon, where it blended with the sky. 

The wings were low, the single story being built in the 
mansard roof, in the old French style, but the towers at 
either end rose a story higher. The central tower was crowned 
by a sort of flattened dome like the clock towers of the Tuil- 
eries or the Louvre ; the single room in the turret was a sort 
of belvedere, and fitted with a turret-clock. Ridge tiles had 
been used for economy’s sake; the massive balks of timber 
from the forest readily carried the enormous weight of the 
roof. 

Graslin’s folly,” as he called the chateau, had brought 
five hundred thousand francs into the commune. He had 
planned the road before he died, and the commune out of 
gratitude had finished it. Montegnac had, moreover, grown 
considerably. Behind the stables and outbuildings, on the 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 139 

north side of the hill where it slopes gradually down into the 
plain, Graslin had begun to build the steadings of a farm on 
a large scale, which showed that he had meant to turn the 
waste land in the plain to account. The plantations con¬ 
sidered indispensable by M. Bonnet were still proceeding 
under the direction of a head gardener with six men, who 
were lodged in the outbuildings. 

The whole ground floor of the chateau, taken up by sitting- 
rooms, had been splendidly furnished, but the second story 
was rather bare, M. Graslin’s death having suspended the up¬ 
holsterer’s operations. 

“ Ah ! my lord,” said Mme. Graslin, turning to the bishop, 
after they had been through the chateau, “ I had thought to 
live here in a thatched cottage. Poor M. Graslin committed 
many follies-” 

“ And you-” the bishop added, after a pause, and Mme. 

Graslin’s light shudder did not escape him —you are about 
to do charitable deeds, are you not ? ” 

She went to her mother, who held little Francis by the 
hand, laid her hand on the old woman’s arm, and went with 
the two as far as the long terrace which rose above the church 
and the parsonage ; all the houses in the village, rising step¬ 
wise up the hillside, could be seen at once. The cure took 
possession of M. Dutheil, and began to point out the various 
features of the landscape ; but the eyes of both ecclesiastics 
soon turned to the terrace, where Veronique and her mother 
stood motionless as statues; the older woman took out a hand¬ 
kerchief and wiped her eyes, her daughter leaned upon the 
balustrade, and seemed to be pointing out the church below. 

“What is the matter, madame ? ” the Cure Bonnet asked, 
turning to La Sauviat. 

“Nothing,” answered Mme. Graslin, coming towards the 
two priests and facing them. “ I did not know that the 
churchyard would be right under my eyes-” 

“ You can have it removed ; the law is on your side.” 





140 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


** The law / ” the words broke from her like a cry of pain. 

Again the bishop looked at Veronique. But she—tired of 
meeting that sombre glance, which seemed to lay bare the 
soul and discover her secret in its depths, a secret buried in a 
grave in that churchyard—cried out— 

Very well, then— 

The bishop laid his hand over his eyes, so overwhelmed by 
this, that for some moments he stood lost in thought. 

‘^Hold her up,” cried the old mother; ‘^she is turning 
pale.” 

‘*The air here is so keen, I have taken a chill,” murmured 
Mme. Graslin, and she sank fainting as the two ecclesiastics 
caught her in their arms. They carried her into the house, 
and when she came to herself again she saw the bishop and 
the cure kneeling in prayer for her. 

May the angel which has visited you ever stay beside 
you ! ” the.bishop said, as he gave her his blessing. ‘‘Adieu, 
my daughter.” 

Mme. Graslin burst into tears at the words. 

“ Is she really saved ? ” cried the old mother. 

“In this world and in the next,” the bishop turned to an¬ 
swer, as he left the room. 

Mme. Graslin had been carried by her mother’s orders to a 
room on the first floor of the southern tower; the windows 
looked out upon the churchyard and the south side of Mon- 
tegnac. Here she chose to remain, and installed herself there 
as best she could with her maid Aline, and little Francis. 
Mme. Sauviat’s room naturally was near her daughter’s. 

It was some days before Mme. Graslin recovered from the 
cruel agitation which prostrated her on the day of her arrival, 
and, moreover, her mother insisted that she must stay in bed in 
the morning. In the evening, however, Veronique came to sit 
on a bench on the terrace, and looked down on the church 
and parsonage and into the churchyard. In spite of mute 
opposition on Mme. Sauviat’s part, Veronique contracted a 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTAgNAC. 


141 


habit of always sitting in the same place and giving way to 
melancholy broodings; it was almost a mania. 

“ Madame is dying/’ Aline said to the old mother. 

At last the two women spoke to the cure; and he, good 
man, who had shrunk from intruding himself upon Mme. 
Graslin, came assiduously to see her when he learned that 
she was suffering from some malady of the soul, carefully 
timing his visits so that he always found Veronique and the 
child, both in mourning, out on the terrace. The country 
was already beginning to look dreary and sombre in the early 
days of October. 

When Veronique first came to the chateau, M. Bonnet had 
seen at once that she was suffering from some hidden wound, 
but he thought it better to wait until his future penitent should 
give him her confidence. One evening, however, he saw an 
expression in Mme. Graslin’s eyes that warned him to hesitate 
no longer—the dull apathy of a mind brooding over the 
thought of death. He set himself to check the progress of 
this cruel disease of the mind. 

At first there was a sort of struggle between them, a fence 
of empty words, each of them striving to disguise ■ their 
thoughts. The evening was chilly, but for all that Veronique 
sat out on the granite bench with little Francis on her knee. 
She could not see the churchyard, for Mme. Sauviat, leaning 
against the parapet, deliberately shut it out from sight. Aline 
stood waiting to take the child indoors. It was the seventh 
time that the cure had found Veronique there on the terrace. 
He spoke— 

I used to think that you were merely sad, madame, but,” 
and he lowered his voice and spoke in her ear, “ this is de¬ 
spair. Despair, Madame Graslin, is neither Christian nor 
is it Catholic.” 

*‘Oh ! ” she exclaimed, with an intent glance at the sky, 
and a bitter smile stole over her lips, what would the church 
leave to a damned soul, if not despair? ” 


142 


THE COUNTRY TARS ON. 


Her words revealed to the cure how far this soul had been 
laid waste. 

“Ah! you are making for yourself a hell out of this hill¬ 
side, when it should rather be a calvary whence your soul 
might lift itself up towards heaven.” 

“I am too humble now,” she said, “to put myself on such 
a pedestal,” and her tone was a revelation of the depth of her 
self-scorn. 

Then a sudden light flashed across the cure—one of the 
inspirations which come so often and so naturally to noble 
and pure souls who live with God. He took up the child and 
kissed him on the forehead. “ Poor little one ! ” he said, in 
a fatherly voice, and gave the child to the nurse, who took 
him away. Mine. Sauviat looked at her daughter, and saw 
how powerfully those words had wrought on her, for Veron- 
ique’s eyes, long dry, were wet with tears. Then she too 
went, with a sign to the priest. 

“Will you take a walk on the terrace?” suggested M. 
Bonnet when they were alone. “ You are in my charge; I 
am accountable to God for your sick soul,” and they went 
towards the end of the terrace above “ Tascherons’.” 

“Leave me to recover from my prostration,” she said. 

“Your prostration is the result of pernicious broodings.” 

“Yes,” she said, with the naivete of pain, too sorely 
troubled to fence any longer. 

“ I see,” he answered ; “ you have sunk into the depths of 
indifference. If physical pain passes a certain point it extin¬ 
guishes modesty, and so it is with mental anguish, it reaches a 
degree when the soul grows faint within us; I know.” 

Veronique was not prepared for this subtle observation and 
tender pity in M. Bonnet; but as has been seen already, the 
quick sympathies of a heart unjaded by emotion of its own 
had taught him to detect and feel the pain of others among 
his flock with the maternal instinct of a woman. This apos¬ 
tolic tenderness, this ?nens dtvinior, raises the priest above his 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTRGNAC. 143 

fellow-men and makes of him a being divine. Mme. Graslin 
had not as yet looked deep enough into the curb’s nature to 
discover the beauty hidden away in that soul, the source of 
its grace and freshness and its inner life. 

“Ah! monsieur-’’she began, and a glance and a 

gesture, such a gesture and glance as the dying give, put her 
secret into his keeping. 

“ I understand ! ” he answered. “ But what then ? What 
is to be done ? ” 

Silently they went along the terrace towards the plain. To 
the bearer of good-tidings, the son of Christ, the solemn 
moment seemed propitious. 

“ Suppose that you stood now before the Throne of God,” 
he said, and his voice grew low and mysterious, “ what would 
you say to Him ? ” 

Mme. Graslin stopped short as if thunderstruck; a light 
shudder ran through her. 

“I should say to Him as Christ said, * My Father, Thou 
hast forsaken me I ’ ” she answered simply. The tones of her 
voice brought tears to the cure’s eyes. 

“ Oh Magdalen, those are the very words I was waiting to 
hear I ” he exclaimed, unable to refuse his admiration. “ You 
see, you appeal to God’s justice! Listen, madame, religion 
is the rule of God before the time. The church reserves the 
right of judgment in all that concerns the soul. Man’s justice 
is but the faint image of God’s justice, a pale shadow of the 
eternal adapted to the temporal needs of society.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ You are not judge in your own cause, you are amenable to 
God; you have no right to condemn nor to pardon yourself. 
God is the great reviser of judgments, my daughter.” 

“ Ah ! ” she cried. 

“ He sees to the origin of all things, while we only see the 
things themselves.” 

Again Veronique stopped. These ideas were new to her. 



144 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘‘To a soul as lofty as yours,” he went on courageously, 
“ I do not speak as to my poor parishioners; I owe it to you 
to use a different language. You who have so cultivated your 
mind can rise to the knowledge of the spirit of the Catholic 
religion, which words and symbols must express and make 
visible to the eyes of babes and the poor. Follow what I 
am about to say carefully, for it refers to you; and if the 
point of view which I take for the moment seems wide, it is 
none the less your own case which I am considering, and now 
about to make clear to your understanding. 

“ Justice, devised for the protection of society, is based upon 
a theory of the equality of individuals. Society, which is 
nothing but an aggregation of facts, is based on inequality. 
So there is a fundamental discrepancy between justice and 
fact. Should the law exercise a restraining or encouraging 
influence on the progress of society? In other words, should 
the law oppose itself to the internal tendency of society, so 
as to maintain things as they are; or, on the other hand, 
should the law be more flexible, adapt itself, and keep pace 
with the tendency so as to guide it ? No maker of laws since 
men began to live together has taken it upon himself to decide 
that problem. All legislators have been content to analyze 
facts, to indicate those which seemed to them to be blame¬ 
worthy or criminal, and to prescribe punishments or rewards. 
Such is law as man has made it. It is powerless to prevent 
evil-doing; powerless no less to prevent offenders who have 
been punished from offending again. 

“ Philanthropy is a sublime error. Philanthropy vainly 
applies severe discipline to the body, while it cannot find the 
balm which heals the soul. Philanthropy conceives projects, 
sets forth theories, and leaves mankind to carry them out by 
means of silence, work, and discipline—dumb methods, with 
no virtue in them. Religion knows nought of these imperfec¬ 
tions ; for her, life extends beyond this world ; for religion, we 
are all of us fallen creatures in a state of degradation, and it 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 


145 


is this very view of mankind which opens out to us an 
inexhaustible treasure of indulgence. All of us are on the 
way to our complete regeneration, some of us are farther 
advanced, and some less, but none of us are infallible; the 
church is prepared for sins, aye, and even for crimes. In 
a criminal, society sees an individual to be cut off from its 
midst, but the church sees in him a soul to be saved. And 

more, far more !- Inspired by God, whose dealings with 

man she watches and ponders, the church admits our inequal¬ 
ity as human beings, and takes the disproportionate burden 
into account, and we who are so unequal in heart, in body or 
mind, in courage or aptitude, are made equal by repentance. 
In this, madame, equality is no empty word ; we can be, and 
are, all equal through our sentiments. 

“ One idea runs through all religions, from the uncouth 
fetichism of the savage to the graceful imaginings of the 
Greek and the profound and ingenious doctrines of India 
and Egypt, an idea that finds expression in all cults joyous 
or gloomy, a conviction of man’s fall and of his sin, whence, 
everywhere, the idea of sacrifice and redemption. 

“The death of the Redeemer, who died for the whole 
human race, is for us a symbol; this, too, we must do for our¬ 
selves ; we must redeem our errors !—redeem our sins !—re¬ 
deem our crimes ! There is no sin beyond redemption—all 
Catholicism lies in that. It is the wherefore of the holy 
sacraments which assist in the work of grace and sustain the 
repentant sinner. And though one should weep, madame, 
and sigh like the Magdalen in the desert, this is but the begin¬ 
ning—an action is the end. The monasteries wept, but acted 
too; they prayed, but they civilized; they were the active 
practical spreaders of our divine religion. Tliey built, and 
planted, and tilled Europe; they rescued the treasures of 
learning for us; to them we owe the preservation of our juris¬ 
prudence, our traditions of statecraft and art. The sites of 
those centres of light will be for ever remembered in Europe 
10 



146 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


with gratitude. Most modern towns sprang up about a mon¬ 
astery. 

‘‘If you believe that God is to judge you, the church, 
using my voice, tells you that there is no sin beyond redemp¬ 
tion through the good works of repentance. The evil we 
have wrought is weighed against the good that we have done 
by the great hands of God. Be yourself a monastery here ; 
it is within your power to work miracles once more. For you, 
work must be prayer. Your work should be to diffuse happi¬ 
ness among those above whom you have been set by your 
fortune and your intellect, and in all ways, even by your 
natural position, for the height of your chateau above the 
village is a visible expression of your social position.” 

They were turning towards the plains as he spoke, so that 
the cure could point out the village on the lower slopes of 
the hill and the chateau towering above it. It was half-past 
four in the afternoon. A shaft of yellow sunlight fell across 
the terrace and the gardens; it lighted up the chS-teau and 
brought out the pattern of the gleaming gilt scroll-work on 
the corner balconies high up on the towers; it lit the plain 
which stretched into the distance divided by the road, a sober 
gray ribbon with no embroidery of trees as yet to outline a 
waving green border on either side. Veronique and M. Bon¬ 
net passed the end of the chateau and came into the court¬ 
yard, beyond which the stables and barn buildings lay in 
sight, and farther yet, the forest of Montegnac ; the sunlight 
slid across the landscape like a lingering caress. Even when 
the last glow of the sunset had faded except from the highest 
hills, it was still light enough in the plain below to see all the 
chance effects of color in the splendid tapestry of an autumn 
forest spread between Montegnac and the first peak of the 
chain of the Correze. The oak trees stood out like masses 
of Florentine bronze among the verdigris greens of the walnuts 
and chestnuts; the leaves of a few trees, the first to change, 
shone like gold among the others; and all these different 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MOJVT^GJVAC. 


147 


shades of color were emphasized by the gray patches of bare 
earth. The trunks of leafless trees looked like pale columns; 
and every tint, red, tawny, and gray, picturesquely blended in 
the pale October sunshine, made a harrifony of color with the 
fertile lowland, where the vast fallows were green as stagnant 
water. Not a tree stirred, not a bird—death in the plain, 
silence in the forest; a thought in the priest's mind, as yet 
unuttered, was to be the sole comment on that dumb beauty. 
A streak of smoke rose here and there from the thatched roofs 
of the village. The chateau seemed sombre as its mistress’ 
mood, for there is a mysterious law of uniformity, in virtue 
of which the house takes its character from the dominant 
nature within it, a subtle presence which hovers throughout. 
The sense of the cure’s words had reached Mme. Graslin’s 
brain; they had gone to her heart with all the force of con¬ 
viction ; the angelic resonance of his voice had stirred her 
tenderness; she stopped suddenly short. The cure stretched 
his arm out towards the forest; Veronique looked at him. 

** Do you not see a dim resemblance between this and the 
life of humanity ? His own fate for each of us ! And what 
unequal lots there are among that mass of trees. Those on 
the highest ground have poorer soil and less water; they are 
the first to die-” 

‘‘ And some are cuf down in the grace of their youth by some 
woman gathering wood ! ” she said bitterly. 

Do not give way to those feelings again,” he answered 
firmly, but with indulgence in his manner. The forest has 
not been cut down, and that has been its ruin. Do you see 
something yonder there among the dense forest ? ” 

Veronique could scarcely distinguish between the usual and 
unusual in a forest, but she obediently looked in the required 
direction, and then timidly at the cure. 

Do you not observe,” he said, seeing in that glance that 
Veronique did not understand, “ that there are strips where 
all the trees of every kind are still green ?’^ 


\ 



148 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Oh, so there are ! ” she cried. How is it ? ” 

In those strips of green lies a fortune for Montegnac and 
for you—a vast fortune, as I pointed out to M. Graslin. 
You can see three furrows; those are three valleys, the 
streams there are lost in the torrent-bed of the Gabon. The 
Gabon is the boundary line between us and the next commune. 
All through September and October it is dry, but when 
November comes it will be full. All that water runs to waste ; 
but it would be easy to make one or two weirs across from side 
to side of the valley to keep back the water (as Riquet did at 
Saint-Ferreol, where there are huge reservoirs which supply 
the Languedoc canal); and it would be easy to increase the 
volume of the water by turning several little streams in the 
forest into the river. Wisely distributing it as required, by 
means of sluices and irrigation trenches, the whole plain can 
be brought into cultivation, and the overflow, besides, could 
be turned into our little river. 

*‘You will have fine poplars along all the channels, and 
you will raise cattle in the finest possible meadows. What is 
grass but water and sun? You could grow corn in the plain, 
there is quite enough depth of earth ; with so many trenches 
there will b^moisture to enrich the soil; the poplar trees will 
flourish along the channels and attract the rain-clouds, and the 
fields will absorb the principles of the rain: these are the 
secrets of the luxuriant greenness of the valleys. Some 
day you will see life and joy and stir instead of this prevail¬ 
ing silence and barren dreariness. Will not this be a noble 
prayer? Will not these things occupy your idleness better 
than melancholy broodings? ” 

V^ronique grasped the cure’s hand, and made but a brief 
answer, but that answer was grand— 

** It shall be done, monsieur.” 

“You have a conception of this great thing,” he began 
again, “ but you will not carry it out yourself. Neither you 
nor I have knowledge enough for the realization of a thought 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MOA'TEGNAC. 149 

which might occur to any one, but that raises immense prac¬ 
tical difficulties; for simple and almost invisible as those diffi¬ 
culties are, they call for the most accurate skill of science. 
So to-morrow begin your search for the human instruments 
which, in a dozen years’ time, will contrive that the six 
thousand acres thus brought into cultivation shall yield you 
an income of six or seven thousand louis d’or. The under¬ 
taking will make Montegnac one of the richest communes in 
the department some day. The forest brings in nothing as 
yet; but sooner or later buyers will come here for the splendid 
timber, treasures slowly accumulated by time, the only treas¬ 
ures which man cannot procure save by patient waiting, 
and cannot do without. Perhaps some day (who knows) 
the government will take steps to open up ways of transporting 
timber grown here to its dockyards ; but the government will 
wait until Montegnac is ten times its present size before giving 
its fostering aid; for the government, like fortune, gives only 
to those who have. By that time this estate will be one of 
the finest in France; it will be the pride of your grandson, 
who may possibly find the chateau too small in proportion to 
his income.” 

“ That is a future for me to live for,” said Veronique. 

Such a work might redeem many errors,” said the cure. 

Seeing that he was understood, he endeavored to send a 
last shaft home by way of her intelligence; he had divined 
that in the woman before him the heart could only be reached 
through the brain; whereas, in other women, the way to the 
brain lies through the heart. 

“Do you know what a great mistake you are making?” 
he asked, after a pause. 

She looked at him with frightened eyes. 

“Your repentance as yet is only the consciousness of a 
defeat. If there is anything fearful, it is the despair of Satan ; 
and perhaps man’s repentance was like this before Jesus Christ 
came on earth. But for us Catholics, repentance is the horror 

S 


150 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


which seizes on a soul hurrying on its downward course, and 
in that shock God reveals Himself. You are like a Pagan 
Orestes; become a Saint Paul! ” 

‘‘Your words have just wrought a complete change in me,” 
she cried. “ Now, oh ! I want to live ! ” 

“The spirit has overcome,” the humble priest said to him¬ 
self, as he went away, glad at heart. He had found food for 
the secret despair which was gnawing Mme. Graslin, by giv¬ 
ing to her repentance the form of a good and noble deed. 

The very next day, therefore, Veronique wrote to M. Gros- 
setete, and in answer to her letter three saddle-horses arrived 
from Limoges for her in less than a week. M. Bonnet made 
inquiries, and sent the postmaster’s son to the chateau; the 
young fellow, Maurice Champion by name, was only too 
pleased to put himself at Mme. Graslin’s disposal, with a 
chance of earning some fifty crowns. Veronique took a liking 
for the lad—round-faced, black-eyed, and black-haired, short, 
and well built—and he was at once installed as groom ; he 
was to ride out with his mistress and to take charge of the 
horses. 

The head forester at Montegnac was a native of Limoges, 
an old quartermaster in the Royal Guard. He had been 
transferred from another estate when the Due de Navarre ins 
began to think of selling the Montegnac lands, and wanted 
information to guide him in the matter; but in Montegnac 
forest Jerome Colorat only saw waste land, never likely to 
come under cultivation, timber valueless for lack of means of 
transport, gardens run wild, and a castle in ruins, calling for 
a vast outlay if it was to be set in order and made habitable. 
He saw wide rock-strewn spaces and conspicuous gray patches 
of granite even in the forest, and the honest but unintelligent 
servant took fright at these things. This was how the property 
had come into the market. 

Mme. Graslin sent for this forester. 

“Colorat,” she said, “I shall most probably ride out to- 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 151 

morrow morning and every following day. You should know 
the different bits of outlying land which M. Graslin added to 
the estate, and you must point them out to me; I want to see 
everything for myself.” 

The servants at the chateau were delighted at this change 
in Veronique’s life. Aline found out her mistress’ old black 
riding habit, and mended it, without being told to do so, and 
next morning, with inexpressible pleasure, Mme. Sauviat-saw 
her daughter dressed for a riding excursion. With Champion 
and the forester as her guides, Mme. Graslin set herself first 
of all to climb the heights. She wanted to understand the 
position of the slopes and the glens, the natural roadways 
cleft in the long ridge of the mountain. She would measure 
her task, study the course of the streams, and see the rough 
material of the cure’s schemes. The forester and Champion 
were often obliged to consult their memories, for the moun¬ 
tain paths were scarcely visible in that wild country. Colorat 
went in front, and Champion followed a few paces from 
her side. 

So long as they kept in the denser forest, climbing and 
descending the continual undulations of a French mountain 
district, its wonders filled Veronique’s mind. The mighty 
trees which had stood for centuries amazed her, until she saw 
so many that they ceased to be a surprise. Then others suc¬ 
ceeded, full grown and ready for felling; or in a forest clear¬ 
ing some single pine risen to giant height; or, stranger still, 
some common shrub, a dwarf growth elsewhere, here risen, 
under some unusual conditions, to the height of a tree nearly 
as old as the soil in which it grew. The wreaths of mist 
rolling over the bare rocks filled her with indescribable feel¬ 
ings. Higher yet, pale furrows cut by the melting snows 
looked like scars far up on the mountain sides ; there were 
bleak ravines in which no plant grew, hillside slopes where 
the soil had been washed away, leaving bare the rock-clefts, 
where the hundred-year-old chestnuts grew straight and tall as 


152 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


pines in the Alps ; sometimes they went by vast shifting sands, 
or boggy places where the trees are few; by fallen masses of 
granite, overhanging crags, dark glens, wide stretches of burnt 
grass or moor, where the heather was still in bloom, arid and 
lonely spots where the caper grows and the juniper, then 
through meadows covered with fine short grass, where the rich 
alluvial soil had been brought down and deposited century 
after century by the mountain torrents; in short, this rapid 
ride gave her something like a bird’s-eye view of the land, a 
glimpse of the dreariness and grandeur, the strength and 
sweetness of nature’s wilder moods in the mountain country 
of midland France. And by dint of gazing at these pictures 
so various in form, but instinct with the same thought, the 
deep sadness expressed by the wild ruined land in its barren¬ 
ness and neglect passed into her own thoughts, and found a 
response in her secret soul. As, through some gap in the 
woods, she looked down on the gray stretch of plain below, or 
when their way led up some parched ravine where a few 
stunted shrubs starved among the boulders and the sand, by 
sheer reiteration of the same sights she fell under the influence 
of this stern scenery; it called up new ideas in her mind, 
stirred to a sense of the significance underlying these outward 
and visible forms. There is no spot in a forest but has this 
inner sense, not a clearing, not a thicket, but has an analogy 
in the labyrinth of the human thought. 

Who is. there with a thinking brain or a wounded heart 
that can pass through a forest and find the forest dumb ? Be¬ 
fore you are aware its voice is in your ears, a soothing or an 
awful voice, but more often soothing than awful. And if 
you were to examine very closely into the causes of this sensa¬ 
tion, this solemn, incomplex, subduing, and mysterious forest- 
influence that comes over you, perhaps you will find its source 
in the sublime and subtle effect of the presence of so many 
creatures all obedient to their destinies, immovable in sub¬ 
mission. Sooner or later the overwhelming sense of the abid- 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 


153 


ingness of nature fills your heart and stirs deeper feelings, 
until at length you grow restless to find God in it. And so it 
was that the silence of the mountain heights about her, out 
in the pure clear air with the forest scents in it, Veronique 
recovered, as she told M. Bonnet in the evening, the certainty 
of Divine mercy. She had glimpses of the possibility of an 
order of things above and beyond that in which her musings 
had hitherto revolved. She felt something like happiness. 
For a long time past she had not known such peace. Could 
it have been that she was conscious of a certain likeness be¬ 
tween this country and the waste and dried-up places in her 
own soul ? Did she look with a certain exultation on the 
troubles of nature with some thought that matter was punished 
here for no sin ? Certain it is that her inner self was strongly 
stirred. 

More than once Colorat and Champion looked at her, and 
then at each other, as if for them she was transfigured. One 
spot in particular that they reached in the steep bed of a dry 
torrent seemed to Veronique to be unspeakably arid. It was 
with a certain surprise that she found herself longing to hear 
the sound of falling water in those scorching ravines. 

“ Always to love ! ” she thought. The words seemed like 
a reproach spoken aloud by a voice. In confusion she urged 
her horse blindly up towards the summit of the mountain of 
the Correze, and in spite of her guides dashed up to the top 
(called the Living Rock), and stood there alone. For several 
moments she scanned the whole country below her. She had 
heard the secret voices of so many existences asking to live, 
and now something took place within her that determined her 
to devote herself to this work with all the perseverance which 
she had already displayed to admiration. She tied her horse’s 
bridle to a tree and sat down on a slab of rock. Her eyes 
wandered over the land where nature showed herself so harsh 
a step-dame, and felt within her own heart something of the 
mother’s yearning which she had felt over her child. Her 


154 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


half-unconscious meditations, which, to use her own beautiful 
metaphor, “ had sifted her heart,” had prepared her to receive 
the sublime teaching of the scene that lay before her. 

“It was then,” she told the cure, “ that I understood that 
our souls need to be tilled quite as much as the land.” 

The pale November sunlight shone over the wide landscape, 
but already a few gray clouds were gathering, driven across 
the sky by a cold west wind. It was now about three o’clock. 
Veronique had taken four hours to reach the point; but, as is 
the wont of those who are gnawed by profound inward misery, 
she gave no heed to anything without. At that moment her 
life shared the sublime movement of nature and dilated within 
her. 

“ Do not stay up there any longer, madame,” said a man’s 
voice, and something in its tone thrilled her. “ You cannot 
reach home again in any direction if you do, for the nearest 
house lies a couple of leagues away, and it is impossible to 
find your way through the forest in the dark. And even those 
risks are nothing compared with the risk you are running 
where you are; in a few moments it will be deadly cold on 
the peak; no one knows the why or wherefore, but it has 
been the death of many a one before now.” 

Mme. Graslin, looking down, saw a face almost black with 
sunburn, and two eyes that gleamed from it like tongues of 
fire. A shock of brown hair hung on either side of the face, 
and a long pointed beard wagged beneath it. The owner of 
the face respectfully raised one of the great broad-brimmed 
hats which the peasantry wear in the midland districts of 
France, and displayed a bald but magnificent brow, such as 
sometimes in a poor man compels the attention of passers-by. 
Veronique felt not the slightest fear; for a woman in such a 
position as hers, all the petty considerations which cause 
feminine tremors have ceased to exist. 

“ How did you come there ? ” she asked him. 

“ I live here, hard by,” the stranger answered. 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MOJVTAGJVAC. 


155 


“And what do you do in this out-of-the-way place? ” asked 
Veronique. 

“I live in it.” 

“ But how, and on what do you live ? ” 

“They pay me a trifle for looking after this part of the 
forest,” he said, pointing to the slopes of the peak opposite 
the plains of Montegnac. As he moved, Mine. Graslin caught 
sight of a game-bag and the muzzle of a gun, and any mis¬ 
givings she might have entertained vanished forthwith. 

“ Are you a keeper ? ” 

“ No, madame. You can’t be a keeper until you have been 
sworn, and you can’t take the oath unless you have all your 
civic rights-” 

“Then, who are you ? ” 

“I am Farrabesche,” said the man, in deep humility, with 
his eyes on the ground. 

The name told Mme. Graslin nothing. She looked at the 
man before her. In an exceedingly kindly face there were 
signs of latent savagery; the uneven teeth gave an ironical 
turn, a suggestion of evil hardihood to the mouth and blood- 
red lips. In person he was of middle height, broad in the 
shoulders, short in the neck, which was very full and deeply 
sunk. He had the large hairy hands characteristic of violent- 
tempered people capable of abusing their physical advantages. 
His last words suggested some mystery, and his bearing, face, 
and figure all combined to give to that mystery a terrible 
interpretation. 

“ So you are in my employ?” Veronique said gently. 

“ Then have I the honor of speaking to Mme. Graslin ?” 
asked Farrabesche. 

“Yes, my friend,” said she. 

Farrabesche vanished with the speed of some wild creature 
after a frightened glance at his mistress. Veronique hastily 
mounted and went down to her two servants; the men were 
growing uneasy about her, for the inexplicable unwholesome- 



156 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


ness of the Living Rock was well known in the country. 
Colorat begged her to go down a little valley into the plain. 

It would be dangerous to return by the higher ground,” he 
said ; the tracks were hard to find, and crossed each other, 
and in spite of his knowledge of the country, he might lose 
himself.” 

Once in the plain, Veronique slackened the pace of her 
horse. 

“ Who is this Farrabesche whom you employ? ” she asked, 
turning to the head forester. 

Did madame meet him ? ” exclaimed Colorat. 

‘*Yes, but he ran away.” 

‘^Poor fellow! Perhaps he does not know how kind 
madame is.” 

“ But, after all, what has he done ? ” 

‘*Why, madame, Farrabesche is a murderer,” Champion 
blurted out. 

“Then, of course, he was pardoned, was he not?” Veron¬ 
ique asked in a tremulous voice. 

“No, madame,” Colorat answered. “Farrabesche was 
tried at the assizes, and condemned to ten years’ penal ser¬ 
vitude ; but he only did half his time, for they let him off the 
rest of the sentence; he came back from the hulks in 1827. 
He owes his life to M. le Cure, who persuaded him to give 
himself up. Judged by default, and sentenced to death, they 
would have caught him sooner or later, and he would have 
been in a bad way. M. Bonnet went out to look for him at 
the risk of his life. Nobody knows what he said to Farra¬ 
besche ; they were alone for a couple of days; on the third 
he brought Farrabesche back to Tulle, and there he gave him¬ 
self up. M. Bonnet went to see a clever lawyer, and got him 
to take up Farrabesche’s case; and Farrabesche came off with 
ten years in jail. M. le Cure used to go to see him while he 
was in prison ; and that fellow yonder, who was a terror to 
the whole countryside, grew as meek as any maid, and let 


MADAME GEASLIN AT MONTAGNAC. 157 

them take him off to prison quietly. When he came out 
again, he settled down hereabouts under M. le Cure’s direc¬ 
tion. People mind what they say to him \ he always goes on 
Sundays and holidays to the services and to mass. He has a 
seat in the church along with the rest of us, but he always 
keeps by himself close to the wall. He takes the sacrament 
from time to time, but at the communion-table he keeps 
apart too.” 

And this man has killed another man ! ” 

One asked Colorat; “he has killed a good many, he 
has ! But he is not a bad sort for all that.” 

“Is it possible? ” cried Veronique, and in her amazement 
she let the bridle fall on the horse’s neck. 

The head forester asked nothing better than to tell the tale. 

“ You see, madame,” he said, “ Farrabesche maybe was in 
the fight at bottom. He was the last of the Farrabesches, an 
old family in the Correze; aye, yes! His eldest brother, 
Captain Farrabesche, was killed just ten years before in Italy, 
at Montenotte; only twenty-two he was, and a captain! 
That is what you might call bad luck, now, isn’t it ? And he 
had a little book-learning too; he could read and write, and 
he had made up his mind to be a general. They were sorry 
at home when he died, as well they might be, indeed ! I was 
in the army with The Other then; and I heard talk of his 
death. Oh ! Captain Farrabesche fell gloriously; he saved 
the army, he did, and the Little Corporal ! I was serving at 
that time under General Steingel, a German—that is to say, 
an Alsatian—a fine soldier he was, but shortsighted, and 
that was how he came by his end, some time after Captain 
Farrabesche’s. The youngest boy, that is, the one yonder, was 
just six years old when he heard them talking about his big 
brother’s death. The second brother went into the army too, 
but he went as a private soldier; and died a sergeant, first 
regiment of the Guard, a fine post, at the battle of Austerlitz, 
* VAutre^ viz., Napoleon. 


158 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


where, you see, madame, they manoeuvred us alias smoothly 
as if it had been review day at the Tuileries. I was there 
myself. Oh ! I was lucky; I went through it all, and never 
came in for a single wound. Well, then, our Farrabesche, the 
youngest, brave though he was, took it into his head that he 
would not go for a soldier. And ’tis a fact, the army did not 
suit that family. When the sub-prefect wanted him in i8ii, 
he took to the woods; a M-efractory conscript,’ eh! that’s 
what they used to call them. Thereupon a gang of chauffeurs 
got hold of him by fair means or foul, and he took to warm¬ 
ing people’s feet at last! You understand that no one except 
M. le Cure knows what he did along with those rascals, ask¬ 
ing their pardon I Many a brush he had with the gendarmes, 
and the regular troops as well! First and last he has seen 
seven skirmishes.” 

“ People say that he killed two soldiers and three gend¬ 
armes 1 ” put in Champion. 

“ Who is to know how many? ” Colorat answered. He 
did not tell them. At last, madame, all the others were 
caught; but he, an active young fellow, knowing the country 
as he did, always got away. That gang of chauffeurs used to 
hang on the outskirts of Brives and Tulle, and they would 
often come over here to lie low, because Farrabesche knew 
places where they could hide easily. After 1814 nobody 
troubled about him any more, the conscription was abolished ; 
but he had to spend the year 1815 in the woods. As he could 
not sit down with his arms folded and live, he helped once 
more to stop a coach down below yonder in the ravine but 
in the end he took M. le Cure’s advice, and gave himself up. 
It was not easy to find witnesses; nobody dared give evidence 
against him. Then M. le Cure and his lawyer worked so 
hard for him that they let him off with ten years. He was 
lucky after being a chauffeur, for a chatiffeur he was.” 

But what is a chauffeur 

“ If you like, madame, I will just tell you the sort of thing 


MADAME GEASLIN AT MONTAGNAC. 


159 


they did, by all that I can make out from one and another, for 
you will understand that I was never a chauffeur myself. It 
was not nice, but necessity knows no law. It was like this: 
if they suspected some farmer or landowner of having money 
in his possession, seven or eight of them would drop in in the 
middle of the night, and they would light a fire and have 
supper there and then ; when supper was over, if the master 
of the house would not give them as much money as they 
asked, they would tie his feet up to the pot-hook at the back 
of the fire, and would not let him go until they had what they 
asked for. That was all. They came in masks. With so 
many expeditions, there were a few mishaps. Lord ! yes; 
there are obstinate folk and stingy people everywhere. There 
was a farmer once, old Cochegrue, a regular skinflint he was, 
he let them burn his feet; and, well, the man died of it. 
There was M. David’s wife too, not far from Brives; she died 
afterwards of the fright they gave her, simply seeing them tie 
her husband’s feet. ‘ Just give them what you have! ’ she 
said to him as she went. He would not, and she showed 
them the hiding-place. For five years the chauffeurs were the 
terror of the countryside ; but get this well into your pate—I 
beg pardon, madame !—that more than one of them belonged 
to good families, and that sort of people are not the ones to 
let themselves be nabbed.” 

Mme. Graslin listened and made no reply. There was a 
moment’s pause; then young Champion, eager to interest his 
mistress in his turn, was anxious to tell what he knew of 
Farrabesche. 

“Madame ought to hear the whole truth of the matter. 
Farrabesche has not his match on horseback or afoot. He 
will fell an ox with a blow of his fist ! He can carry seven- 
hundred weight, that he can ! and there is not a better shot 
anywhere. When I was a little chap they used to tell me 
tales about Farrabesche. One day he and three of his com¬ 
rades were surprised j they fought till one was killed and two 


160 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


were wounded; well, and good, Farrabesche saw that he was 
caughtj bah! he jumps on a gendarme’s horse behind the 
man, claps spurs to the animal, which bolts off at a furious 
gallop and is out of sight, he gripping that gendarme round 
the waist all the time; he hugged the man so tight that after 
a while he managed to fling him off and ride single in the 
saddle, so he escaped and came by a horse. And he had the 
impudence to sell it directly afterwards ten leagues on the 
other side of Limoges. He lay in hiding for three months 
after that exploit, and no one could find him. They offered a 
reward of a hundred louis to any one who would betray him.” 

“ Another time,” added Colorat, as to those hundred 
louis put on his head by the prefect at Tulle, Farrabesche put 
a cousin of his in the way of earning it—Giriex it was, over 
at Vizay. His cousin denounced him, and seemed as if he 
meant to give him up. Oh ! he actually gave him up; and 
very glad the gendarmes were to take him to Tulle. But he 
did not go far; they had to put him in the prison at Lubersac, 
and he got away the very first night, by way of a hole made 
by one of the gang, one Gabilleau, a deserter from the 17th, 
executed at Tulle, who was moved away the night before he 
expected to escape. A pretty character Farrabesche gained 
by these adventures. The troop had trusty friends, you know. 
And, besides, people liked the chauffeurs. Lord, they were 
quite different then from what they are nowadays, jolly fellows 
every one of them, that spent their money like princes. 
Just imagine it, madame; finds the gendarmes on his track 
one evening, does he? Well, he slipped through their fingers 
that time by lying twenty-four hours in a pond in a farmyard, 
drawing his breath through a hole in the straw at the edge of 
a dung-heap. What did a little discomfort like that matter to 
him when he had spent whole nights up among the little 
branches at the very top of a tree where a sparrow could 
hardly hold, watching the soldiers looking for him, passing 
and repassing below. Farrabesche was one of the five or six 


MADAME GRASLIJV AT MONT^GNAC. 


161 


chauffeurs whom they never could catch; for as he was a 
fellow-countryman, and joined the gang perforce (for, after 
all, he only took to the woods to escape the conscription), all 
the women took his part, and that counts for much.” 

” So Farrabesche has really killed several men,” Mme. 
Graslin said again. 

“Certainly,” Colorat replied; “ they even say that it was 
he who murdered the traveler in the coach in 1812 ; but the 
courier and postillion, the only witnesses who could have 
identified him, were dead when he came up for trial.” 

“And the robbery?” asked Mme. Graslin. 

“Oh! They took all there was ; but the five-and-twenty 
tliousand francs which they found belonged to the govern- 
ment.” 

For another league Mme. Graslin rode on in silence. The 
sun had set, and in the moonlight the gray plain looked like 
the open sea. Once or twice Champion and Colorat looked 
at Mme. Graslin, for her silence made them uneasy, and both 
were greatly disturbed to see that her eyes were red with much 
weeping and full of tears, which fell drop by drop and glit¬ 
tered on her cheeks. 

“Oh! don’t be sorry for him, madame,” said Colorat. 
“ The fellow led a jolly life, and has had pretty sweethearts. 
And if the police keep an eye on him now, he is protected by 
M. le Cure’s esteem and friendship; for he repented, and in 
the convict’s prison behaved in the most exemplary way. 
Everybody knows that he is as good as the best among us; 
only he is so proud, he has no mind to lay himself open to any 
slight, but he lives peaceably and does good after his fashion. 
Over the other side of the Living Rock he has ten acres or 
so of young saplings of his own planting; and when he sees 
a place for a tree in the forest, he will stick one of them in. 
Then he lops off the dead branches, and collects the wood, 
and does it up in faggots ready for poor people. And the 
poor people, knowing that they can have firewood all ready 
11 


162 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


for the asking, go to him instead of helping themselves and 
damaging your woods. So if he still ‘ warms people’s feet,’ 
as you may say, it does them good now. Farrabesche is fond 
of your forest; he looks after it as if it were his own.” 

‘^And yet he lives!- quite alone.” Mme. Graslin 

hastily added the last two words. 

“ Asking your pardon, madame, no. He is bringing up a 
little lad; going fifteen now he is,” said Maurice Champion. 

“Faith, yes, that he is,” Colorat remarked, “for La 
Curieux had that child a good while before Farrabesche gave 
himself up.” 

“ Is it his son ? ” asked Mme. Graslin. 

“Well, every one thinks so.” 

“ And why did he not marry the girl ? ” 

“Why? Because they would have caught him I And, 
besides, when La Curieux knew that he was condemned, she 
left the neighborhood, poor thing.” 

“ Was she pretty? ” 

“ Oh, my mother says that she was very much like—dear 
me I another girl who left the place too—very much like 
Denise Tascheron.” 

“ Was he loved ? ” asked Mme. Graslin. 

“Bah! yes, because he was 2l chauffeur said Colorat. 

The women always fall in love with anything out of the 
way. But for all that, nothing astonished people hereabouts 
so much as this love affair. Catherine Curieux was a good 
girl who lived like a virgin saint; she was looked on as a par¬ 
agon of virtue in her neighborhood over at Vizay, a large 
village in the Correze, on the boundary of two departments. 
Her father and mother were tenants of M. Brezac’s. Cathe¬ 
rine Curieux was quite seventeen years old at the time of 
Farrabesche’s sentence. The Farrabesches were an old family 
out of the same district, but they settled on the Montegnac 
lands; they had the largest farm in the village. Farrabesche’s 
father and mother are dead now, and La Curieux’s three 



MADAME GEASLIN AT MONtAgNAC. 163 

sisters are married; one lives at Aubusson, one at Limoges, 
and one at Saint-Leonard.” 

Do you think that Farrabesche knows where Catherine 
is?” asked Mme. Graslin. 

'‘If he knew, he would break his bounds. Oh ! he would 

go to her- As soon as he came back he asked her father 

and mother (through M. Bonnet) for the child. La Curieux’s 
father and mother were taking care of the child; M. Bonnet 
persuaded them to give him up to Farrabesche.” 

" Does nobody know what became of her? ” 

“ Bah ! ” said Colorat. " The lass thought herself ruined, 
she was afraid to stop in the place! She went to Paris. 
What does she do there? That is the rub. As for looking 
for her in Paris, you might as well try to find a marble among 
the flints there in the plain.” 

Colorat pointed to the plain of Montegnac as he spoke. 
By this time Mme. Graslin was only a few paces from the 
great gateway of the chateau. Mme. Sauviat, in anxiety, was 
waiting there for her with Aline and the servants; they did 
not know what to think of so long an absence. 

" Well,” said Mme. Sauviat, as she helped her daughter to 
dismount, "you must be horribly tired.” 

" No, dear mother,” Mme. Graslin answered, in an un¬ 
steady voice, and Mme. Sauviat, looking at her daughter, saw 
that she had been weeping for a long time. 

Mme. Graslin went into the house with Aline, her confiden¬ 
tial servant, and shut herself into her room. She would not 
see her mother; and when Mme. Sauviat tried to enter. Aline 
met the old Auvergnate with " Madame is asleep.” 

The next morning Veronique set out on horseback, with 
Maurice as her sole guide. She took the way by which they 
had returned the evening before, so as to reach the Living 
Rock as quickly as might be. As they climbed up the ravine 
which separates the last ridge in the forest from the actual 


164 


THE COIN TRY TARS OAT. 


summit of the mountain (for the Living Rock, seen from the 
plain, seems to stand alone), Veronique bade Maurice show 
her the way to Farrabesche's cabin and wait with the horses 
until she came back. She meant to go alone. Maurice went 
with her as far as a pathway which turned off towards the 
opposite side of the Living Rock, farthest from the plain, and 
pointed out the thatched roof of a cottage half-hidden on 
the mountain side; below it lay the nursery-ground of which 
Colorat had spoken. 

It was almost noon. A thin streak of smoke rising from 
the cottage chimney guided Veronique, who soon reached the 
place, but would not show herself at first. At the sight of 
the little dwelling, and the garden about it, with its fence of 
dead thorns, she stood for a few moments lost in thoughts 
known to her alone. Several acres of grass land, enclosed by 
a quickset hedge, wound away beyond the garden; the low- 
spreading branches of apple and pear and plum trees were 
visible here and there in the field. Above the house, on the 
sandier soil of the high mountain slopes, there rose a splendid 
grove of tall chestnut trees, their topmost leaves turned yellow 
and sere. 

Mme. Graslin pushed open the crazy wicket which did duty 
as a gate, and saw before her the shed, the little yard, and all 
the picturesque and living details of the dwellings of the poor. 
Something surely of the grace of the open fields hovers about 
them. Who is there that is not moved by the revelation of 
lowly, almost vegetative lives—the clothes drying on the 
hedge, the rope of onions hanging from the roof, the iron 
cooking pots set out in the sun, the wooden bench hidden 
among the honeysuckle leaves, the houseleeks that grow on 
the ridges of almost every thatched hovel in France ? 

Veronique found it impossible to appear unannounced in 
her keeper’s cottage, for two fine hunting-dogs began to bark 
as soon as they heard the rustle of her riding habit on the 
dead leaves; she gathered up her skirts on her arm, and went 


MADAME GRASLDV AT MONTAgNAC. 


165 


towards the house. Farrabesche and the boy were sitting on 
a wooden bench outside. Both rose to their feet and uncov¬ 
ered respectfully, but without a trace of servility. 

“ I have been told that you are seeing after my interests,” 
said Veronique, with her eyes fixed on the lad; so I deter¬ 
mined to see your cottage and nursery of saplings for myself, 
and to ask you about some improvements.” 

“lam at your service, madame,” replied Farrabesche. 

Veronique was admiring the lad. It was a charming face; 
somewhat sunburned and brown, but in shape a faultless oval; 
the outlines of the forehead were delicately fine, the orange- 
colored eyes exceedingly bright and alert; the long dark hair, 
parted on the forehead, fell upon either side of the brow. 
Taller than most boys of his age, he was very nearly five feet 
high. His trousers were of the same coarse brown linen as 
his shirt; he wore a threadbare waistcoat of rough blue cloth 
with horn buttons, a short jacket of the material facetiously 
described as “ Maurienne velvet,” in which Savoyards are 
wont to dress, and a pair of iron-bound shoes on his otherwise 
bare feet to complete the costume. His father was dressed in 
the same fashion; but instead of the little lad’s brown woolen 
cap, Farrabesche wore the wide-brimmed peasant’s hat. In 
spite of its quick intelligence, the child’s face bore the look 
of gravity (evidently unforced) peculiar to young creatures 
brought up in solitude ; he must have put himself in harmony 
with the silence and the life of the forest. Indeed, in both 
Farrabesche and his son the physical side of their natures 
seemed to be the most highly developed; they possessed the 
peculiar faculties of the savage—the keen sight, the alertness, 
the complete mastery of the body as an instrument, the quick 
hearing, the signs of activity and intelligent skill. No sooner 
did the boy’s eyes turn to his father than Mme. Graslin 
divined that here was the limitless affection in which the 
promptings of natural instinct and deliberate thought were 
confirmed by the most effectual happiness. 


166 


THE COUNTRY PERSON. 


** Is this the child of whom I have heard ? ” asked V6ron- 
ique, indicating the lad. 

Yes, madame.” 

Veronique signed to Farrabesche to come a few paces away. 
“But have you taken no steps towards finding his mother? ” 
she asked. 

“ Madame does not know, of course, that I am not allowed 
to go beyond the bounds of the commune where I am liv¬ 
ing-” 

“ And have you never heard of her?” 

“ When my time was out,” he said, “ the commissary paid 
over to me the sum of a thousand francs, which had been 
sent me, a little at a time, every quarter; the rules would not 
allow me to have it until I came out. I thought that no one 
but Catherine would have thought of me, as it was not M. 
Bonnet who sent it; so I am keeping the money for Benja¬ 
min.” 

“And how about Catherine’s relations?” 

“ They thought no more about her after she went away. Be¬ 
sides, they did their part by looking after the child.” 

Veronique turned to go towards the house. 

“Very well, Farrabesche,” she said ; “ I will have inquiry 
made, so as to make sure that Catherine is still living, and 
where she is, and what kind of life she is leading-” 

“ Madame, whatever she may be, I shall look upon it as 
good fortune to have her for my wife,” the man cried in a 
softened tone. “ It is for her to show reluctance, not for me. 
Our marriage will legitimate the poor boy, who has no suspi¬ 
cion yet of how he stands.” 

The look in the father’s eyes told the tale of the life these 
two outcasts led in their voluntary exile; they were all in all 
to each other, like two fellow-countrymen in the midst of a 
desert. 

“ So you love Catherine? ” asked Veronique. 

“It is not so much that I love her, madarne,” he answered. 



MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTAgNAC. 167 

as that, placed as I am, she is the one woman in the world 
for me.” 

Mme. Graslin turned swiftly, and went as far as the chestnut 
trees, as if some pang had shot through her. The keeper 
thought that this was some whim of hers, and did not ven¬ 
ture to follow. For nearly a quarter of an hour she sat, 
apparently engaged in looking out over the landscape. She 
could see all that part of the forest which lay along the side 
of the valley, with the torrent in the bottom ; it was dry now, 
and full of boulders, a sort of huge ditch shut in between the 
forest-covered mountains above Montegnac and another 
parallel range, these last hills being steep though low, and so 
bare that there was scarcely so much as a starveling tree here 
and there to crown the slopes, where a few rather melancholy¬ 
looking birches, juniper bushes, and briars were trying to 
grow. This second range belonged to a neighboring estate, 
and lay in the department of the Corrte ; indeed, the cross¬ 
road which meanders along the winding valley is the bound¬ 
ary line of the arrondissemeni of Montegnac, and also of the 
two estates. The opposite side of the valley beyond the tor¬ 
rent was quite unsheltered and barren enough. It was a sort 
of long wall with a slope of fine woodland behind it, and a 
complete contrast in its bleakness to the side of the mountain 
on which Farrabesche’s cottage stood. Gnarled and twisted 
forms on the one side, and on the other shapely growths and 
delicate curving lines; on the one side the dreary, unchanging 
silence of a sloping desert, held in place by blocks of stone 
and bare, denuded rocks, and on the other, the contrasts of 
green among the trees. Many of them were leafless now, but 
the fine variegated tree-trunks stood up straight and tall on 
each ledge, and the branches waved as the wind stirred 
through them. A few of them, the oaks, elms, beeches, and 
chestnuts which held out longer against the autumn than the 
rest, still retained their leaves—golden, or bronze, or purple. 

In the direction of Montegnac the valley opens out so 


168 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


widely that the two sides describe a vast horsehoe. Veronique, 
with her back against a chestnut tree, could see glen after glen 
arranged like the stages of an amphitheatre, the topmost 
crests of the trees rising one above the other in rows like the 
heads of spectators. On the other side of the ridge lay her 
own park, in which, at a later time, this beautiful hillside was 
included. Near Farrabesche’s cottage the valley grew nar¬ 
rower and narrower, till it closed in as a gully scarce a hun¬ 
dred feet across. 

The beauty of the view over which Mme. Graslin’s eyes 
wandered, heedlessly at first, soon recalled her to herself. 
She went back to the cottage, where the father and son were 
standing in silence, making no attempt to explain the strange 
departure of their mistress. Veronique looked at the house. 
It was more solidly built than the thatched roof had led her 
to suppose; doubtless it had been left to go to ruin at the 
time when the Navarreins ceased to trouble themselves about 
the estate. No sport, no gamekeepers. But though no one 
had lived in it for a century, the walls held good in spite of 
the ivy and climbing plants which clung about them on every 
side. Farrabesche himself had thatched the roof when he 
received permission to live there; he had laid the stone-flags 
on the floor, and brought in such furniture as there was. 

Veronique went inside the cottage. Two beds, such as the 
peasants use, met her eyes; there was a large cupboard of 
walnut-wood, a hutch for bread, a dresser, a table, three 
chairs, a few brown earthen platters on the shelves of the 
dresser; in fact, all the necessary household gear. A couple 
of guns and a game-bag hung above the mantle-shelf. It went 
to Veronique’s heart to see how many things the father had 
made for the little one; there was a toy man-of-war, a fishing 
smack, and a carved wooden cup, a chest wonderfully orna¬ 
mented, a little box decorated with mosaic work in straw, a 
beautifully-wrought crucifix and rosary. The rosary was made 
of plum-stones; on each a head had been carved with wonder- 


MADAME GKASLIN AT MONTJ^GNAC. 169 

ful skill—Jesus Christ, the Apostles, the Madonna, St. John 
the Baptist, St. Anne, the tv/o Magdalens. 

“ I did it to amuse the child during the long winter even¬ 
ings,” he said, with something of apology in his tone. 

Jessamine and climbing roses covered the front of the 
house, and broke into blossom about the upper windows. 
Farrabesche used the first floor as a storeroom; he kept 
poultry, ducks, and a couple of pigs, and bought nothing but 
bread, salt, sugar, and such groceries as they needed. Neither 
he nor the lad di'ank wine. 

‘‘Everything that I have seen and heard of you,” Mme. 
Graslin said at last, turning to Farrabesche, “ has led me to 
take an interest in you which shall not come to nothing.” 

“This is M. Bonnet’s doing, I know right well 1 ” cried 
Farrabesche with touching fervor. 

“ You are mistaken; M. le Cure has said nothing to me of 
you as yet; chance or God, it may be, has brought it all 
about.” 

“Yes, madame, it is God’s doing; God alone can work 
wonders for such a wretch as I.” 

“ If your life has been a wretched one,” said Mme. Graslin, 
in tones so low that they did not reach the boy (a piece of 
womanly feeling which touched Farrabesche), “ your repent¬ 
ance, your conduct, and M. Bonnet’s good opinion should go 
far to retrieve it. I have given orders that the buildings on 
the large farm near the chateau which M. Graslin planned are 
to be finished; you shall be my steward there; you will find 
scope for your energies and employment for your son. The 
public prosecutor at Limoges shall be informed of your case, 
and I will engage that the humiliating restrictions which make 
your life a burden to you shall be removed.” 

Farrabesche dropped down on his knees as if thunderstruck 
at the words which opened out a prospect of the realization of 
hopes hitherto cherished in vain. He kissed the hem of Mme. 
Graslin’s riding habit; he kissed her feet. Benjamin saw the 


170 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


tears in his father’s eyes, and began to sob without knowing 
why. 

Do not kneel, Farrabesche,” said Mme. Graslin ; you 
do not know how natural it is that I should do for you these 

things that I have promised to do- Did you not plant 

those trees?” she added, pointing to one or two pitch-pines, 
Norway pines, firs, and larches at the base of the arid, thirsty 
hillside opposite. 

‘‘Yes, madame.” 

“Then is the soil better just there?” 

“The water is always wearing the rocks away, so there is a 
little light soil washed down on to your land, and I took ad¬ 
vantage of it, for all the valley down below the road belongs 
to you ; the road is the boundary line.” 

“ Then does a good deal of water flow down the length of 
the valley?” 

“ Oh ! in a few days, madame, if the weather sets in rainy, 
you will maybe hear the roaring of the torrent over at the 
chateau ! but even then it is nothing compared with what it 
will be when the snow melts. All the water from the whole 
mountain side there at the back of your park and gardens 
flows into it; in fact, all the streams hereabouts flow down to 
the torrent, and the water comes down like a deluge. Luckily 
for you, the tree-roots on your side of the valley bind the 
soil together, and the water slips off the leaves, for the fallen 
leaves here in autumn are like an oilcloth cover for the land, 
or it would all be washed down into the valley bottom, and 
the bed of the torrent is so steep that I doubt whether the 
soil would stop there.” 

“ What becomes of all the water ? ” asked Mme. Graslin. 

Farrabesche pointed to the gully which seemed to shut in 
the valley below his cottage. 

“ It pours out over a chalky bit of level ground that sepa¬ 
rates Limousin from the Correze, and there it lies for several 
months in stagnant green pools, sinking slowly down into the 



MADAME GRASLIN AT MOiVT^GNAC. 171 

soil. That is how the common came to be so unhealthy that 
no one lives there, and nothing can be done with it. No kind 
of cattle will pasture on the reeds and rushes in those brackish 
pools. Perhaps there are three thousand acres of it altogether; 
it is the common land of three parishes ; but it is just like the 
plain of Montegnac, you can do nothing with it. And down 
in your plain there is a certain amount of sand and a little 
soil among the flints, but here there is nothing but the bare 
tufa.” 

“ Send for the horses ; I mean to see all this for myself.” 

Mine. Graslin told Benjamin where she had left Maurice, 
and the lad went forthwith. 

They tell me that you know every yard of this country,” 
Mine. Graslin continued; “can you explain to me how it 
happens that no water flows into the plain of Montegnac from 
my side of the ridge ? there is not the smallest torrent there 
even in rainy weather or in the time of the melting of the 
snows.” 

“ Ah ! madame,” Farrabesche answered, “ M. le Cure, who 
is always thinking of the prosperity of Montegnac, guessed the 
cause, but had not proof of it. Since you came here, he told 
me to mark the course of every runnel in every little valley. 
I had been looking at the lay of the land yesterday, and was 
on my way back when I had the honor of meeting you at the 
base of the Living Rock. I heard the sound of horsehoofs, 
and I wanted to know who was passing this way. Madame, 
M. Bonnet is not only a saint, he is a man of science. ‘ Far¬ 
rabesche,’ said he (I being at work at the time on the road 
which the commune finished up to the chdteau for you)— 
^ Farrabesche, if no water from this side of the hill reaches 
the plain below, it must be because nature has some sort of 
drainage arrangement for carrying it off* elsewhere.* Well, 
madame, the remark is so simple that it looks downright trite, 
as if any child might have made it. But nobody since Mon¬ 
tegnac was Montegnac, neither great lords, nor stewards, nor 


172 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


keepers, nor rich, nor poor, though the plain lay there before 
their eyes with nothing growing on it for want of water, 
not one of them ever thought of asking what became of the 
water in the Gabon. The stagnant water gives them the fever 
in three communes, but they never thought of looking for the 
remedy; and I myself never dreamed of it; it took a man of 
God to see that-” 

Farrabesche’s eyes filled with tears as he spoke. 

“The discoveries of men of genius are all so simple, that 
every one thinks he could have found them out,” said Mine. 
Graslin; and to herself she added, “But there is this grand 
thing about genius, that while it is akin to all others, no one 
resembles it.” 

“At once I saw what M. Bonnet meant,” Farrabesche went 
on. “ He had not to use a lot of long words to explain my 
job to me. To make the thing all the queerer, madame, all 
the ridge above your plain (for it all belongs to you) is full 
of pretty deep cracks, ravines, and gullies, and whatnot; but 
all the water that flows down the valleys, clefts, ravines, and 
gorges, every channel, in fact, empties itself into a little valley 
a few feet lower than the level of your plain, madame. I 
know the cause of this state of things to-day, and here it is: 
There is a sort of embankment of rock (sc/iisf^ M. Bonnet 
calls it) twenty or thirty feet thick, which runs in an unbroken 
line all round the bases of the hills between Montegnac and 
the Living Rock. The earth being softer than the stone, has 
been worn away and been hollowed out; so, naturally the 
water all flows round into the Gabou, eating its passage out 
of each valley. The trees and thickets and brushwood hide 
the lay of the land ; but when you follow the streams and track 
their passage, it is easy to convince yourself of the facts. In 
this way both hillsides drain into the Gabou, all the water from 
this side that we see, and the other over the ridge where your 
])ark lies, as well as from the rocks opposite. M. le Cure 
thinks that this state of things would work its own cure when 



MADAME GRAS LIN AT MONTAGNAC. 


173 


the water-courses on your side of the ridge are blocked up at 
the mouth by the rocks and soil washed dov/n from above, so 
that they raise barriers between themselves and the Gabou. 
When that time comes your plain will be flooded in turn like 
the common land you are just about to see ; but it would take 
hundreds of years to bring that about. And, besides, is it a 
thing to wish for, madame? Suppose that your plain of 
Montegnac should not suck up all that water, like the common 
land here, there would be some more standing pools there to 
poison the whole country.” 

“So the places M. le Cure pointed out to me a few days 
ago, where the trees are still green, must mark the natural 
channels through which the water flows down into the Gabou?” 

“Yes, madame. There are three hills between the Living 
Rock and Montegnac, and consequently there are three water¬ 
courses, and the streams that flow down them, banked in by 
the schist barrier, turn to the Gabou. That belt of wood still 
green, round the base of the hills, looks as if it were part of 
your plain, but it marks the course of the channel which was 
there, as M. le Cure guessed it would be.” 

“ The misfortune will soon turn to a blessing for Mon- 
t^gnac,” said Mme. Graslin, with deep conviction in her 
tones. “And since you have been the first instrument, you 
shall share in the work; you shall find active and willing 
workers, for hard work and perseverance must make up for the 
money which we lack.” 

Mme. Graslin had scarcely finished the sentence when Ben¬ 
jamin and Maurice came up; she caught at her horse’s bridle, 
and, by a gesture, bade Farrabesche mount Maurice’s horse. 

“Now bring me to the place where the v/ater drowns the 
common land,” she said. 

“ It will be so much the better that you should go, madame, 
since that the late M. Graslin, acting on M. Bonnet’s advice, 
bought about three hundred acres of land at the mouth of the 
gully where the mud has been deposited by the torrent, so 


174 


THE COUNTRY TARS ON. 


that over a certain area there is some depth of rich soil. 
Madame will see the other side of the Living Rock ; there is 
some magnificent timber there, and doubtless M. Graslin 
would have had a farm on the spot. The best situation would 
be a place where the little stream that rises near my house 
sinks into the ground again; it might be turned to advan¬ 
tage.” 

Farrabesche led the way, and Veronique followed down a 
steep path towards a spot where the two sides of the gully 
drew in, and then separated sharply to east and west, as if 
divided by some earthquake shock. The gully was about sixty 
feet across. Tall grasses were growing among the huge 
boulders in the bottom. On the one side the Living Rock, 
cut to the quick, stood up a solid surface of granite without 
the slightest flaw in it; but the height of the uncompromising 
rock-wall was crowned with the overhanging roots of trees, 
for the pines clutched the soil with their branching roots, 
seeming to grasp the granite as a bird clings to a bough; but 
on the other side the rock was yellow and sandy, and hollowed 
out by the weather: there was no depth in the caverns, no 
boldness in the hollows of the soft crumbling ochre-tinted 
rock. A few prickly-leaved plants, burdocks, reeds, and 
water-plants at its base were sufficient signs of a north aspect 
and poor soil. Evidently the two ranges, though parallel, and 
as it were blended at the time of the great cataclysm which 
changed the surface of the globe, were composed of entirely 
different materials—an inexplicable freak of nature, or the 
result of some unknown cause which waits for genius to dis¬ 
cover it. In this place the contrast between them was most 
strikingly apparent. 

Veronique saw in front of her a vast dry plateau. There 
was no sign of plant-life anywhere ; the chalky soil explained 
the infiltration of the water, only a few stagnant pools 
remained here and there where the surface was incrusted. To 
the right stretched the mountains of the Correze, and to the 



# 



Of 

.M* 'i} 







FARRABESCH E LED THE WAY, AND VERONIQUE FOLLOWED. 


i V 


A 






% 



■ 




















L* - 4 




wmm -::^ ^i ■, k - 

, , .- • .fc.,, ,■.',v ., 




V. ’4 /; 




^ *% 


’■> ' 


r n 


®l’ 


'e*>^ 




j ^ ' » * • «.AL,^j(HL A 


rif' ''^•V 


’* 


i t I 

■ ■ ^ 


V *. 


M. 




m 


■ 5.:? 



.1^ 




\ 


I.» 






r.v 




V, 


s ^■^.' 

.V ^ vJ 


. Of> ' 


LSil’iV 


r.\4 


.5^/ 


• r 






isy. 


16 


' 4 ki ■'^ 

V •-^" 

?, r.--f’>. -: (.* , .' •' . ’ f 

' '•" r *'• 





\n 


'-•C ■ * 4 




I'l: « 



f ' « 



•> 


...i’cia 


’» ■» 


1 * 


.'•* 


SA: iii' L! 

.,-m ■"■'"# ,-“ V-'^^ '''■*1^* ■ • ■ -<'.'1!^ *’• 


I • • 

k' .... ♦•. •*• > 4'*T •■•.4 

la*' /■'■'■W'<" 


f- * 




^tk‘-^l-k -^^-." "'•* -A- ■•; 





V *• ' 

-■ */a O ■ 

I 







H 


<>' > .V' 

■■ ■ 


=. ,M- 


.-■.•'’tiC# I .. • .’II 


Kriifii 


V* • 




‘ 













MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 175 

left the eye was arrested by the huge mass of the Living Rock, 
the tall f ^ St trees that clothed its sides, and two hundred 
acres of grass below the forest, in strong contrast with the 
ghastly solitude about them. 

“ My son and I made the ditch that you see down yonder,” 
said Farrabesche; you can see it by the line of tall grass; it 
will be connected shortly with the ditch that marks the edge 
of your forest. Your property is bounded on this side by a 
desert, for the first village lies a league away.” 

Veronique galloped into the hideous plain, and her keeper 
followed. She cleared the ditch and rode at full speed across 
the dreary waste, seeming to take a kind of wild delight in the 
vast picture of desolation before her. Farrabesche was right. 
No skill, no human power could turn that soil to account, the 
ground rang hollow beneath the horse’s hoofs. This was a 
result of the porous nature of the tufa, but there were cracks 
and fissures no less through which the flood-water sank out of 
sight, doubtless to feed some far-off springs. 

And yet there are souls like this ! ” Veronique exclaimed 
within herself as she reined in her horse, after a quarter of an 
hour’s gallop. 

She mused a while with the desert all about her; there was 
no living creature, no animal, no insect; birds never crossed 
the plateau. In the plain of Montegnac there were at any rate 
the flints, a little sandy or clayey soil, and crumbled rock to 
make a thin crust of earth a few inches deep as a begin¬ 
ning for cultivation; but here the ungrateful tufa, which 
had ceased to be earth, and had not become stone, wearied 
the eyes so cruelly that they were absolutely forced to turn 
for relief to the illimitable ether of space. Veronique 
looked along the boundary of her forests and at the meadow 
which her husband had added to the estate, then she went 
slowly back towards the mouth of the Gabou. She came 
suddenly upon Farrabesche, and found him looking into a 
hole, which might have suggested that some one of a specu- 


176 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


lative turn had been probing this unlikely spot, imagining that 
nature had hidden some treasure there. 

What is it ? ” asked Veronique, noticing the deep sadness 
of the expression on the manly face. 

‘‘ Madame, I owe my life to this trench here, or, more 
properly, I owe to it a space for repentance and time to re¬ 
deem my faults in the eyes of men-” 

The effect of this explanation of life was to nail Mme. 
Graslin to the spot. She reined in her horse. 

“I used to hide here, madame. The ground is so full of 
echoes, that if I laid my ear to the earth I could catch the 
sound of the horses of the gendarmerie or the tramp of sol ¬ 
diers (an unmistakable sound that !) more than a league away. 
Then I used to escape by way of the Gabou. I had a horse 
ready in a place there, and I always put five or six leagues 
between myself and them that were after me. Catherine used 
to bring me food of a night. If she did not find any sign 
of me, I always found bread and wine left in a hole covered 
over by a stone.” 

These recollections of his wild vagrant life, possibly un¬ 
wholesome recollections for Farrabesche, stirred Veronique’s 
most indulgent pity, but she rode rapidly on towards the 
Gabou, followed by the keeper. While she scanned the gap, 
looking down the long valley, so fertile on one side, so forlorn 
on the other, and saw, more than a league away, the hillside 
ridges, tier on tier, at the back of Montegnac, Farrabesche 
said, ‘‘There will be famous waterfalls here in a few days.” 

“And by the same day next year, not a drop of water will 
ever pass that way again. I am on my own property on 
either side, so I shall build a wall solid enough and high 
enough to keep the water in. Instead of a valley which is 
doing nothing, I shall have a lake, twenty, thirty, forty, or 
fifty feet deep, and about a league across—a vast reservoir for 
the irrigation channels that shall fertilize the whole plain of 
Montegnac.” 



MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 


177 


‘‘M. le Cure was right, madame, when he told us, as 
we were finishing your road, that we were working for 
our mother; may God give his blessing to such an enter¬ 
prise.” 

“Say nothing about it, Farrabesche,” said Mme. Graslin; 
“ it is M. Bonnet’s idea.” 

Veronique returned to Farrabesche’s cottage, found Mau¬ 
rice, and went back at once to the chateau. Her mother and 
Aline were surprised at the change in her face ; the hope of 
doing good to the country had given it a look of something 
like happiness. Mme. Graslin wrote to M. Grossetete; she 
wanted him to ask M. de Granville for complete liberty for 
the poor convict, giving particulars as to his good conduct, 
which was further vouched for by the mayor’s certificate and 
a letter from M. Bonnet. She also sent other particulars con¬ 
cerning Catherine Curieux, and entreated Grossetete to interest 
the public prosecutor in her kindly project, and to cause a 
letter to be written to the prefecture of police in Paris with a 
view to discovering the girl. The mere fact that Catherine 
had remitted sums of money to the convict in prison should 
be a sufficient clue by which to trace her. Veronique had set 
her heart on knowing the reason why Catherine had failed to 
come back to her child and to Farrabesche. Then she told 
her old friend of her discoveries in the torrent bed of the 
Gabou, and laid stress on the necessity of finding the clever 
man for whom she had already asked him. 

The next day was Sunday. For the first time since Vero¬ 
nique took up her abode in Montegnac, she felt able to go to 
church for mass. She went and took possession of her pew 
in the Lady Chapel. Looking round her, she saw how bare 
the poverty-stricken church was, and determined to set by a 
certain sum every year for repairs and the decoration of the 
altars. She heard the words of the priest, tender, gracious, 
and divine; for the sermon, couched in such simple language 
that all present could understand it, was in truth sublime. 

12 


178 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


The sublime comes from the heart; it- is not to be found by 
effort of the intellect; and religion is an inexhaustible source 
of sublime thoughts with no false glitter of brilliancy, for the 
Catholicism which penetrates and changes hearts is wholly of 
the heart. M. Bonnet found in the epistle a text for his 
sermon, to the effect that soon or late God fulfills his prom¬ 
ises, watches over his own, and encourages the good. He 
made it clear that great things would be the result of the 
presence of a rich and charitable resident in the parish, by 
pointing out that the duties of the poor towards the beneficent 
rich were as extensive as those of the rich towards the poor, 
and that the relation should be one of mutual help. 

Farrabesche had spoken to some of those who were glad to 
see him (one consequence of the spirit of Christian charity 
which M. Bonnet had infused into practical action in his 
parish), and had told them of Mme. Graslin’s kindness to 
him. All the commune had talked this over in the square 
below the church, where, according to country custom, they 
gathered together before mass. Nothing could more com¬ 
pletely have won the good-will of these folk, who are so readily 
touched by any kindness shown to them ; and when Veron- 
iqiie came out of church she found almost all the parish 
standing in a double row. All hats went off respectfully and 
in deep silence as she passed. This welcome touched her, 
though she did not know the real reason of it. Among the 
last of all she saw Farrabesche, and spoke to him. 

You are a good sportsman ; do not forget to send us 
some game.” 

A few days after this Veronique walked with the cure in 
that part of the forest nearest her chateau ; she determined to 
descend the ridges which she had seen from the Living Rock, 
ranged tier on tier on the other side of the hill. With the 
cure’s assistance she would ascertain the exact position of the 
higher affluents of the Gabou. The result was the discovery 
by the cure of the fact that the streams which water Upper 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTAGNAC. 


179 


Montegnac really rose in the mountains of the Correze. 
These ranges were united to the mountain by the arid rib of 
hill which ran parallel to the chain of the Living Rock. 
The cure came back from that walk with boyish glee; he 
saw, with the naivete of a poet, the prosperity of the village 
that he loved. And what is a poet but a man who realizes his 
dreams before the time? M. Bonnet reaped his harvests as he 
looked down from the terrace at the barren plain. 

Farrabesche and his son came up to the chateau next morn¬ 
ing loaded with game. The keeper had brought a cup for 
Francis Graslin ; it was nothing less than a masterpiece—a 
battle-scene carved on a cocoanut shell. Mme. Graslin 
happened to be walking on the terrace, on the side that over¬ 
looked Tascherons.” She sat down on a garden seat, and 
looked long at that fairy’s work. Tears came into her eyes 
from time to time. 

“You must have been very unhappy,” she said, addressing 
Farrabesche after a silence. 

“What could I do, madame ? ” he answered. “I was 
there without the. hope of escape, which makes life bearable 
to almost all the convicts-” 

“ It is an appalling life! ” she said, and her look and com¬ 
passionate tones invited Farrabesche to speak. 

In Mme. Graslin’s convulsive tremor and evident emotion 
Farrabesche saw nothing but the overwrought interest excited 
by pitying curiosity. Just at that moment Mme. Sauviat 
appeared in one of the garden walks, and seemed about to 
join them, but Veronique drew out her handkerchief and 
motioned her away. “Let me be, mother,” she cried, in 
sharper tones than she had ever before used to the old 
Auvergnate. 

“ For five years I wore a chain riveted here to a heavy iron 
ring, madame,” Farrabesche said, pointing to his leg. “ I 
was fastened to another man. I have had to live like that 
with three convicts first and last. I used to lie on a wooden 



180 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


camp bedstead, and I had to work uncommonly hard to get a 
thin mattress, called a serpeniin. There were eight hundred 
men in each ward. Each of the beds {tolards, they called 
them) held twenty-four men, all chained together two and 
two, and nights and mornings they passed a long chain called 
the ‘ bilboes string,’ in and out of the chains that bound each 
couple together, and made it fast to the tolard, so that all of 
us were fastened down by the feet. Even after a couple of 
years of it, I could not get used to the clank of those chains; 
every moment they said, ‘ You are in a convicts’ prison ! ’ 
If you dropped off to sleep for a minute, some rogue or other 
would begin to wrangle or turn himself round, and put you in 
mind of your plight. You had to serve an apprenticeship to 
learn how to sleep. I could not sleep at all, in fact, unless I 
was utterly exhausted with a heavy day’s work. 

“After I managed to sleep, I had, at any rate, the night 
when I could forget things. Forgetfulness—that is something, 
madame ! Once a man is there, he must learn to satisfy his 
needs after a manner fixed by the most pitiless rules. You 
can judge, madame, what sort of effect this life was like to 
have on me, a young fellow who had always lived in the 
woods, like the wild goats and the birds ! Ah ! if I had not 
eaten my bread cooped up in the four walls of a prison for six 
months beforehand, I should have thrown myself into the sea 
at the sight of my mates, for all the beautiful things M. 
Bonnet said, and (I may say it) he has been the father of my 
soul. I did pretty well in the open air ; but when once I was 
shut up in the ward to sleep or eat (for we ate our food there 
out of troughs, three couples to each trough), it took all the 
life out of me; the dreadful faces and the language of the 
others always sickened me. Luckily, at five o’clock in the 
summer, and half-past seven in winter, out we went in spite 
of heat or cold or wind or rain, in the ‘jail gang’—that 
means to work. So we were out of doors most of our time, 
and the open air seems very good to you when you come out 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTi^GNAC. 181 

of a place where eight hundred convicts herd together. The 
air, you must always remember, is sea-air ! You enjoy the 
breeze, the sun is like a friend, and you watch the clouds pass 
over, and look for hopeful signs of a beautiful day. For my 
own part, I took an interest in my work.” 

Farrabesche stopped, for two great tears rolled down Ver- 
onique’s cheeks. 

“ Oh ! madame, these are only the roses of that exist¬ 
ence! ” he cried, taking the expression on Mme. Graslin’s 
face for pity of his lot. These are the dreadful precautions 
the government takes to make sure of us, the inquisition kept 
up, by the warders, the inspection of fetters morning and 
evening, the coarse food, the hideous clothes that humiliate 
you at every moment, the constrained position while you 
sleep, the frightful sound of four hundred double chains 
clanking in an echoing ward, the prospect of being mowed 
down with grapeshot if half-a-dozen scoundrels take it into 
their heads to rebel—all these horrible things are nothing, 
they are the roses of that life, as I said before. Any respect¬ 
able man unlucky enough to be sent there must die of disgust 
before very long. You have to live day and night with 
another convict; you have to endure the company of five 
more at every meal, and twenty-three at night; you have to 
listen to their talk. 

The convicts have secret laws among themselves, madame; 
if you make an outlaw of yourself, they will murder you; if 
you submit, you become a murderer. You have your choice— 
you must be either victim or executioner. After all, if you 
die at a blow, that would put an end to you and your 
troubles; but they are too cunning in wickedness, it is 
impossible to hold out against their hatred: any one whom 
they dislike is completely at their mercy, they can make every 
moment of his life one constant torture worse than death. 
Any man who repents and tries to behave well is the common 
enemy, and more particularly they suspect him of tale-telling. 

1 ’ 


182 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


They will take a man’s life on a mere suspicion of tale-telling. 
Every ward has its tribunal, where they try crimes against the 
convicts’ laws. It is an olTense not to conform to their 
customs, and a man may be punished for that. For instance, 
everybody is bound to help the escape of a convict; every 
convict has his chance of escape in turn, when the whole 
prison is bound to give him help and protection. It is a 
crime to reveal anything done by a convict to further his 
escape. I will not speak of the horrible moral tone of the 
prison ; strictly speaking, it has nothing to do with the sub¬ 
ject. The prison authorities chain men of opposite disposi¬ 
tions together, so as to neutralize any attempt at escape or re¬ 
bellion ; and always put those who either could not endure 
each other, or were suspicious of each other, on the same 
chain.” 

‘‘What did you do?” asked Mme. Graslin. 

“Oh! it was like this, I had luck,” said Farrabesche; 
“ the lot never fell to me to kill a doomed man ; I never 
voted the death of anybody, no matter whom; I was never 
punished, no one took a dislike to me, and I lived comfort¬ 
ably with the three mates they gave me one after another—all 
three of them feared and liked me. But then I was well 
known in the prison before I jot there, madame. A 
chauffeur! for I was supposed to be one of those brigands. 
I have seen them do it,” Farrabesche went on in a low voice, 
after a pause, “ but I never would help to torture folk, nor 
take any of the stolen money. I was a ‘ refractory conscript,’ 
that was all. I used to help the rest, I was scout for them, I 
fought, I was forlorn sentinel, rearguard, what you will, but I 
never shed blood except in self-defense. Oh ! I told M. 
Bonnet and my lawyer everything, and the judges knew quite 
well that I was not a murderer. But, all the same, I am a great 
criminal; the things that I have done are all against the law. 

“ Two of my old comrades had told them about me before 
I came, I was a man of whom the greatest things might be 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 


183 


expected, they said. In the convicts’ prison, you see, madame, 
there is nothing like a character of that kind ; it is worth even 
more than money. A murder is a passport in this republic of 
wretchedness; they leave you in peace. I did nothing to 
destroy their opinion of me. I looked gloomy and resigned ; 
it was possible to be misled by my face, and they were misled. 
My sullen manner and my silence were taken for signs of 
ferocity. Every one there, convicts and warders, young and 
old, respected me. I was president of my ward. I was never 
tormented at night, nor suspected of tale-telling. I lived 
honestly according to their rules ; I never refused to do any 
one a good turn ; I never showed a sign of disgust; in short, 
I * howled with the wolves,’ to all appearance, and in my 
secret soul I prayed to God. My last mate was a soldier, a 
lad of two-and-twenty, who had stolen something, and then 
deserted in consequence ; I had him for four years. We were 
friends, and wherever I may be I can reckon on him when he 
comes out. The poor wretch, Gu^pin they called him, was 
not a rascal, he was only a harebrained boy; his ten years 
will sober him down. Oh ! if the rest had known that it was 
religion that reconciled me to my fate; that when my time 
was up I meant to live in some corner without letting them 
know where I was, to forget those fearful creatures, and never 
to be in the way of meeting one of them again, they would 
very likely have driven me mad.” 

But, then, suppose that some unhappy, sensitive boy had 
been carried away by passion, and—pardoned so far as the 
death penalty is concerned-? ” 

Madame, a murderer is never fully pardoned. They be¬ 
gin by commuting the sentence for twenty years of penal ser¬ 
vitude. But for a decent young fellow it is a thing to shudder 
at! It is impossible to tell you about the life in store for him ; 
it would be a hundred times better for him that he should 
die ! Yes, for such a death on the scaffold is good fortune.” 
I did not dare to think it,” said Mine. Graslin, 



184 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Veronique had grown white as wax. She leaned her fore 
head against the balustrade to hide her face for several mo¬ 
ments. Farrabesche did not know whether he ought to go 
or stay. Then Mme. Graslin rose to her feet, and with an 
almost queenly look she said, to Farrabesche’s great astonish¬ 
ment, “Thank you, my friend ! ” in tones that went to his 
heart. Then after a pause—“Where did you draw courage 
to live and suffer as you did ? ” she asked. 

“Ah, madame, M. Bonnet had set a treasure in my soul ! 
That is why I love him more than I have ever loved any one 
else in this world.” 

“More than Catherine?” asked Mme. Graslin, with a 
certain bitterness in her smile. 

“Ah, madame, almost as much.” 

“ How did he do it ? ” 

“Madame, the things that he said and the tones of his 
voice subdued me. It was Catherine who showed him the 
way to the hiding-place in the chalk-land which I showed you 
the o.ther day. He came to me quite alone. He was the new 
cur6 of Montegnac, he told me; I was his parishioner, I was 
dear to him, he knew that I had only strayed from the path, 
that I was not yet lost ; he did not mean to betray me, but to 
save me; in fact, he said things that thrill you to the very 
depths of your nature. And you see, madame, he can make 
you do right with all the force that other people take to make 
you do wrong. He told me, poor dear man, that Catherine 
was a mother; I was about to give over two creatures to shame 
and neglect. ‘Very well,’ said I, ‘then they will be just as 
I am ; I have no future before me.’ He answered that I had 
two futures before me, and both of them bad—one in this 
world, the other in the next—unless I desisted and reformed. 
Here below I was bound to die on the scaffold. If I were 
caught, my defense would break down in a court of law. 
On the other hand, if I took advantage of the mildness of the 
new government towards ‘ refractory conscripts ’ of many 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 


185 


years’ standing, and gave myself up, he would strain every 
nerve to save my life. He would find me a clever advocate 
who would pull me through with ten years’ penal servitude. 
After that M. Bonnet talked to me of another life. Catherine 
cried like a Magdalen at that. There, madame,” said Farra- 
besche, holding out his right hand, “she laid her face against 
this, and I feft it quite wet with her tears. She prayed me 
to live ! M. le Cure promised to contrive a quiet and happy 
lot for me and my child, even in this district, and undertook 
that no one should cast up the past to me. In short, he lec¬ 
tured me as if I had been a little boy. After three of those 
nightly visits I was as pliant as a glove. Do you care to 
know why, madame ? ’ ’ 

Farrabesche and Mme. Graslin looked at each other, and 
neither of them to their secret souls explained the real motive 
of their mutual curiosity. 

“ Very well,” the poor ticket-of-leave man continued, “ the 
first time when he had gone away, and Catherine went, too, 
to show him the way back, and I was left alone, I felt a kind 
of freshness and calm happiness such as I had not known 
since I was a child. It was something like the happiness I 
had felt with poor Catherine. The love of this dear man, 
who had come to seek me out, the interest that he took in me, 
in my future, in my soul—it all worked upon me and changed 
me. It was as if a light arose in me. So long as he was with 
me and talked, I held out. How could I help it ? He was a 
priest, and we bandits do not eat their bread. But when the 
sound of his footsteps and Catherine’s died away—oh ! I was, 
as he said two days later, ‘ enlightened by grace.’ 

“ From that time forwards God gave me strength to 
endure everything—the jail, the sentence, the putting on of 
the irons, the journey, the life in the convicts’ prison. I 
reckoned upon M. Bonnet’s promise as upon the truth of the 
Gospel \ I looked on my sufferings as a payment of arrears. 
Whenever things grew unbearable, I used to see, at the end 


186 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


of the ten years, this house in the woods, and my little Ben¬ 
jamin and Catherine there. Good M. Bonnet, he kept his 
promise; but some one else failed me. Catherine was not at 
the prison-door when I came out, nor yet at the trysting-place 
on the common lands. She must have died of grief. That is 
why I am always sad. Now, thanks to you, madame, I shall 
have work to do that needs doing; I shall put ’myself into it 

body and soul, so will my boy for whom I live-” 

“You have shown me how it was that M. le Cure could 

bring about the changes in his parish-” 

“ Oh ! nothing can resist him,” said Farrabesche. 

“ No, no. I know that,” Veronique answered briefly, and 
she very kindly dismissed the grateful Farrabesche with a sign 
of farewell. 

Farrabesche went. Most of that day Veronique spent in 
pacing to and fro along the terrace, in spite of the drizzling 
rain that fell till evening came on. She was gloomy and sad. 
When Veronique’s brows were thus contracted, neither her 
mother nor Aline dared to break in on her mood; she did not 
see her mother talking in the dusk with M. Bonnet, who, 
seeing that she must be roused from this appalling dejection, 
sent the child to find her. Little Francis went up to his 
mother and took her hand, and Veronique suffered herself to 
be led away. At the sight of M. Bonnet she started with 
something almost like dismay. The cure led the way back to 
the terrace. 

“ Well, madame,” he said, “what can you have been talk¬ 
ing about with Farrabesche ? ” 

Veronique did not wish to lie nor to answer the question ; 
she replied to it by another— 

“ Was he your first victory? ” 

“Yes,” said M. Bonnet. “ If I could win him, I felt sure 
of Montegnac; and so it proved.” 

Veronique pressed M. Bonnet’s hand. 

“ From to-day I am your penitent, M. le Cure,” she said, 




MADAME GRAS LIN AT MONTEGNAC. 


187 


with tears in her voice; “to-morrow I will make you a 
general confession." 

The last words plainly spoke of a great inward struggle and 
a hardly-won victory over herself. The cure led the way back 
to the chateau without a word, and stayed with her till dinner, 
talking over the vast improvements to be made in Montegnac. 

“ Agriculture is a question of time," he said. “ The little 
that I know about it has made me to understand how much 
may be done by a well-spent winter. Here are the rains 
beginning, you see; before long the mountains will be 
covered with snow, and your operations will be impossible; 
so hurry M. Grossetete." 

M. Bonnet exerted himself to talk, and drew Mme. Graslin 
into the conversation ; gradually her thoughts were forced to 
take another turn, and by the time he left her she had almost 
recovered from the day’s excitement. But even so, Mme. 
Sauviat saw that her daughter was so terribly agitated that she 
.spent the niglit with her. 

Two days later a messenger sent by M. Grossetete arrived 
with the following letters for Mme. Graslin: 

Grossetite to Mme. Graslin. 

“ My dear Child: —Horses are not easily to be found, but 
I hope that you are satisfied with the three which I sent you. 
If you need draught-horses or plough-horses, they must be 
looked for elsewhere. It is better in any case to use oxen for 
ploughing and as draught animals. In all districts where 
they use horses on the land, they lose their capital as soon as 
the animal is past work, while an ox, instead of being a loss, 
yields a profit to the farmer. 

“ I approve of your enterprise in every respect, my child; 
you will find in it an outlet for the devouring mental energy 
which was turned against yourself and wearing you out. But 
when you asked me to find you, over and above the horses, a 


188 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


man able to second you, and more particularly to enter into 
your views, you ask me for one of those rare birds that we 
rear it is true in the provinces, but which we in no case keep 
among us. The training of the noble animal is too lengthy 
and too risky a speculation for us to undertake, and, besides, 
we are afraid of these very clever folk—‘eccentrics,’ we call 
them. 

“As a matter of fact, too, the men who are classed in the 
scientific category in which you are fain to find a co-operator 
are, as rule, so prudent and so well provided for, that I hardly 
liked to write to tell you how impossible it would be to come 
by such a prize. You ask me for a poet, or, if you prefer 
it, a madman ; but all our madmen betake themselves to Paris. 
I did speak to one or two young fellows engaged on the land 
survey and assessments, contractors for embankments, or fore¬ 
men employed on canal cuttings; but none of them thought 
it worth their while to entertain your proposals. Chance all at 
once threw in my way the very man you want, a young man 
whom I thought to help; for you will see by his letter that 
one ought not to set about doing a kindness in a happy-go- 
lucky fashion, and, indeed, an act of kindness requires more 
thinking about than anything else on this earth. You can 
never tell whether what seemed to you to be right at the time 
may not do harm by and by. By helping others we shape our 
own destinies; I see that now-” 

As Mme. Graslin read those words, the letter dropped from 
her hands. For some moments she sat deep in thought. 

“Oh, God,” she cried, “when wilt Thou cease to smite 
me by every man’s hand ? ” 

Then she picked up the letters and read on— 

“Gdrard seems to me to have plenty of enthusiasm and a 
cool head ; the very man for you ! Paris is in a ferment just 
now with this leaven of new doctrine, and I shall be delighted 



MADAME GKASLIN AT MONTilGNAC. 


189 


if the young fellow keeps out of the snares spread by ambi* 
tious spirits, who work upon the instincts of the generous youth 
of France. The rather torpid existence of the provinces is 
not altogether what I like for him, but neither do I like the 
idea of the excitement of the life in Paris, and the enthusiasm 
for renovating, which urges youngsters into the new ways. 
You, and you only, know my opinions; to me it see^.s that 
the world of ideas revolves on its axis much as the material 
world does. Here is this poor protege of mine wanting im¬ 
possibilities. No power on earth could stand before ambitions 
so violent, imperious, and absolute. I have a liking myself 
for a jog trot; I like to go slowly in politics, and have but very 
little taste for the social topsy-turvydom which all these lofty 
spirits are minded to inflict upon us. To you I confide the 
principles of an old and trusted supporter of the Monarchy, 
for you are discreet. I hold my tongue here among these 
good folk, who believe more and more in progress the farther 
they get into a mess; but for all that it hurts me to see the 
irreparable damage done already to our dear country. 

So I wrote and told the young man that a task worthy of 
him was waiting for him here. He is coming to see you ; for 
though his letter (which I enclose) will give you a very fair 
idea of him, you would like to see him as well, would you not ? 
You women can tell so much from the look of people; and, 
besides, you ought not to have any one, however insignificant, 
in your service unless you like him. If he is not the man 
you want, you can decline his services; but if he suits you, 
dear child, cure him of his flimsily-disguised ambitions, induce 
him to adopt the happy and peaceful life of the fields, a life 
in which beneficence is perpetual, where all the qualities of 
a great and strong nature are continually brought into play, 
where the products of nature are a daily source of new wonder, 
and a man finds worthy occupation in making a real advance 
and practical improvements. I do not in any way overlook 
the fact that great deeds come of great ideas—great theories; 


190 


THE COUNTRY TAR SON. 


but as ideas of that kind are seldom met with, I think that, 
for the most part, practical attainments are worth more than 
ideas. A man who brings a bit of land into cultivation or a 
tree or fruit to perfection, who makes grass grow where grass 
would not grow before, ranks a good deal higher than the 
seeker after formulas for humanity. In what has Newton’s 
science changed the lot.of the worker in the fields? Ah ! my 
dear, I loved you before, but to-day, appreciating to the full 
the task which you have set before you, I love you far more. 
You are not forgotten here in Limoges, and every one admires 
your great resolution of improving Montegnac. Give us our 
little due, in that we have the wit to admire nobility when we 
see it, and do not forget that the first of your admirers is also 
your earliest friend. 

‘‘F. Grossetete.” 

Gerard io Grossetete. 

“I come to you, monsieur, with sad confidences, but you 
have been like a father to me, when you might have been 
simply a patron. So to you alone, who have made me any¬ 
thing that I am, can I make them. I have fallen a victim to 
a cruel disease, a disease, moreover, not of the body; I am 
conscious that I am completely unfitted by my thoughts, feel¬ 
ings, and opinions, and by the whole bent of my mind, to do 
what is expected of me by the government and by society. 
Perhaps this will seem to you to be a piece of ingratitude, but 
it is simply and solely an indictment that I address to you. 

“ When I was twelve years old you saw the signs of a certain 
aptitude for the exact sciences, and a precocious ambition to 
succeed, in a workingman’s son, and it was through you, my 
generous godfather, that I took my flight towards higher 
spheres ; but for you I should be following out my original 
destiny, I should be a carpenter like my poor father, who did 
not live to rejoice in my success. And most surely, monsieur, 
you did me a kindness \ there is no day on which I do not 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT^GNAC. 


191 


bless you; and so, perhaps, it is I who am in the wrong. But 
whether right or wrong, I am unhappy; and does not the fact 
that I pour out my complaints to you set you very high ? Is 
it not as if I made of you a supreme judge, like God ? In 
any case, I trust to your indulgence. 

I studied the exact sciences so hard between the ages of 
sixteen and eighteen that I made myself ill, as you know. 
My whole future depended on my admission to the &oIe 
Polytechnique. The work I did at that time was a dispropor¬ 
tionate training for the intellect; I all but killed myself; I 
studied day and night; I exerted myself to do more than I 
was perhaps fit for. I was determined to pass my examina¬ 
tions so well that I should be sure not only of admittance into 
the Ecole, but of a free education there, for I wanted to spare 
you the expense, and I succeeded ! 

It makes me shudder now to think of that appalling con¬ 
scription of brains yearly made over to the government by 
family ambition ; a conscription which demands such severe 
study at a time when a lad is almost a man, and growing 
fast in every way, cannot but do incalculable mischief; 
many precious faculties which later would have developed 
and grown strong and powerful are extinguished by the light 
of the student’s lamp. |) Nature’s laws are inexorable; they 
are not to be thrust aside by the schemes nor at the pleasure 
of society; and the laws of the physical world, the laws 
which govern the nature without, hold good no less of 
human nature—every abuse must be paid for. If you must 
have fruit out of season, you have it from a forcing house 
either at the expense of the tree or of the quality of the 
fruit. La Quintinie killed the orange trees that Louis XIV. 
might have a bouquet of orange blossoms every morning 
throughout the year. Any heavy demand made on a still¬ 
growing intellect is a draft on its future. 

‘^The pressing and special need of our age is the spirit of 
the lawgiver. Europe has so far seen no lawgiver since Jesus 


192 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Christ; and Christ, who gave us no vestige of a political 
code, left His work incomplete. For example, before tech¬ 
nical schools were established, and the present means of filling 
them with scholars was adopted, did they call in one of the 
great thinkers who hold in their heads the immensity of the 
sum of the relations of the institution to human brain-power; 
who can balance the advantages and disadvantages, and study 
in the past the laws of the future? Was any inquiry made 
into the after-lives of men who, for their misfortune, knew 
the circle of the sciences at too early an age ? Was any esti¬ 
mate of their rarity attempted? Was their fate ascertained? 
Was it discovered how they contrived to endure the continual 
strain of thought? How many of them died like Pascal, 
prematurely, worn out by science ? Some, again, lived to 
old age; when did these begin their studies ? Was it known 
then, is it known now as I write, what conformation of the 
brain is best fitted to stand the strain and to cope prematurely 
with knowledge ? Is it so much as suspected that this is before 
all things a physiological question ? 

Well, I think myself that the general rule is that the 
vegetative period of adolescence should be prolonged. There 
are exceptions; there are some so constituted that they are 
capable of this effort in youth, but the result is the shortening 
of life in most cases. Clearly the man of genius who can 
stand the precocious exercise of his faculties is bound to be an 
exception among exceptions. If medical testimony and social 
data bear me out, our way of recruiting for the technical 
schools in France works as much havoc among the best human 
specimens of each generation as La Quintinie’s process among 
the orange trees. 

^‘But to continue (for I will append my doubts to each 
series of facts), I began my work anew at the Ecole, and with 
more enthusiasm than ever. I meant to leave it as success¬ 
fully as I had entered it. Between the ages of nineteen and 
one-and-twenty I worked with all my might, and developed 


MADAME GRASLIN A T MONTAGNAC. 193 

my faculties by their constant exercise. Those two years set 
the crown on the three which came before them, when I was 
only preparing to do great things. And then, what pride did 
I not feel when I had won the privilege of choosing the career 
most to my mind ? I might be a military or marine engineer, 
might go on the staff of the artillery, into the mines depart¬ 
ment, or the roads and bridges. I took your advice, and 
became a civil engineer. 

“Yet where I triumphed, how many fell out of the ranks ! 
You know that from year to year the government raises the 
standard of the Ecole. The work grows harder and more 
trying from time to time. Tiie course of preparatory study 
through which I went was nothing compared with the work at 
fever-heat in the Ecole, to the end that every physical science— 
mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry, and the terminologies 
of each—may be packed into the heads of so many young men 
between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one. The govern¬ 
ment here in France, which in so many ways seems to aim at 
taking the place of the paternal authority, has in this respect 
no bowels—no father’s pity for its children; it makes its 
experiments in anima vili. The ugly statistics of the mischief 
it has wrought have never been asked for; no one has troubled 
to inquire how many cases of brain fever there have been 
during the last thirty-six years; how many explosions of de¬ 
spair among those young lads; no one takes account of the 
moral destruction which decimates the victims. I lay stress 
on this painful aspect of the problem because it occurs by the 
way and before the final result; for a few weaklings the 
result comes soon instead of late. You know, besides, that 
these victims, whose minds work slowly, or who, it may be, 
are temporarily stupefied with overwork, are allowed to stay 
for three years instead of two at the Ecole, but the way these 
are regarded there has no very favorable influence on their 
capacity. In fact, it may chance that young men, who at a 
later day will show that they have something in them, may 
13 


194 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


leave the Ecole without an appointment at all, because at the 
final examination they do not exhibit the amount of knowledge 
required of them. These are ‘plucked,’ as they say, and 
Napoleon used to make sub-lieutenants of them. In these 
days the ‘ plucked ’ candidate represents a vast loss of capital 
invested by families, and a loss of time for tlie lad himself. 

“But, after all, I myself succeeded! At the age of one- 
and-twenty I had gone over all the ground discovered in 
mathematics by men of genius, and I was impatient to dis¬ 
tinguish myself by going farther. The desire is so natural 
that almost every student when he leaves the Ecole fixes his 
eyes on the sun called glory in an invisible heaven. The 
first thought in all our minds was to be a Newton, a Laplace, 
or a Vauban. Such are the efforts which France requires of 
young men who leave the famous Ecole Polytechnique 1 

“And now let us see what becomes of the men sorted and 
sifted with such care out of a whole generation. At one-and- 
twenty we dream dreams, a whole lifetime lies before us, we 
expect wonders. I entered the School of Roads and Bridges, 
and became a civil engineer. I studied construction, and 
with what enthusiasm ! You must remember it. In 1826, 
when I left the school, at the age of twenty-four, I was still 
only a civil engineer on my promotion, with a government 
grant of a hundred and fifty francs a month. The worst-paid 
book-keeper in Paris will earn as much by the time he is eigh¬ 
teen, and with four hours’ work in the day. By unhoped-for 
good luck, it may be because my studies had brought me dis¬ 
tinction, I received an appointment as a surveyor in 1828. I 
was twenty-six years old. They sent me, you know where, 
into a sub-prefecture with a salary of two thousand five hun¬ 
dred francs. The money matters nothing. My lot is at any 
rate more brilliant than a carpenter’s son has a right to expect; 
but what journeyman grocer put into a shop at the age of six¬ 
teen will not be fairly on the way to an independence by the 
time he is six-and-twenty ? 


MADAME GRAS LIN AT MONT&GNAC. 


195 


“ Then I found out the end to which these terrible displays 
of intelligence were directed, and why the gigantic efforts, 
required of us by the government, were made. The govern¬ 
ment sent me to count paving-stones and measure the heaps 
of road-material by the waysides. I must repair, keep in order, 
and occasionally construct runnels and culverts, maintain the 
ways, clean out, and occasionally open ditches. At the office 
I must answer all questions relating to the alignment or the 
planting and felling of trees. These are, in fact, the principal 
and often the only occupations of an ordinary surveyor. 
Perhaps from time to time there is some bit of leveling to be 
done, and that we are obliged to do ourselves, though any of 
the foremen with his practical experience could do the work 
a good deal better than we can with all our science. 

“There are nearly four hundred of us altogether—ordinary 
surveyors and assistants—and as there are only some hundred- 
odd engineers-in-chief, all the subordinates cannot hope for 
promotion ; there is practically no higher rank to absorb the 
engineers-in-chief, for twelve or fifteen inspectors-general or 
divisionaries scarcely count, and their posts are almost as 
much of sinecures in our corps as colonelcies in the artillery 
when the battery is united with it. An ordinary civil engi¬ 
neer, like a captain of artillery, knows all that is known about 
his work; he ought not to need any one to look after him 
except an administrative head to connect the eighty-six engi¬ 
neers with each other and the government, for a single 
engineer with two assistants is quite enough for a department. 
A hierarchy in such a body as ours works in this way. Ener¬ 
getic minds are subordinated to old effete intelligences, who 
think themselves bound to distort and alter (they think for 
the better) the drafts submitted to them \ perhaps they do this 
simply to give some reason for their existence; and this, it 
seems to me, is the only influence exerted on public works 
in France by the General Council of Roads and Bridges. 

“ Let us suppose, however, that between the ages of thirty 


196 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


and forty I become an engineer of the first-class, and am an 
engineer-in-chief by the time I am fifty. Alas! I foresee 
my future; it lies before my eyes. My engineer-in-chief is a 
man of sixty. He left the famous Ecole with distinction, as 
I did ; he has grown gray in two departments over such work 
as I am doing; he has become the most commonplace man 
imaginable, has fallen from the heights of attainment he once 
reached; nay, more than that, he is not even abreast of sci¬ 
ence. Science has made progress, and he has remained 
stationary; worse still, has forgotten what he once knew! 
The man who came to the front at the age of twenty-two with 
every sign of real ability has nothing of it left now but the 
appearance. At the very outset of his career his education 
was especially directed to mathematics and the exact sciences, 
and he took no interest in anything that was not ‘ in his 
line.’ You would scarcely believe it, but the man knows 
absolutely nothing of other branches of learning. Mathe¬ 
matics have dried up his heart and brain. I cannot tell any 
one but you what a nullity he really is, screened by the name 
of the Ecole Polytechnique. The label is impressive; and 
people, being prejudiced in his favor, do not dare to throw 
any doubt on his ability. But to you I may say that his be¬ 
fogged intellects have cost the department in one affair a 
million francs, where two hundred thousand should have 
been ample. I was for protesting, for opening the prefect’s 
eyes, and whatnot; but a friend of mine, another surveyor, 
told me about a man in the corps who became a kind of black 
sheep in the eyes of the administration by doing something of 
this sort. ‘ Would you yourself be very much pleased, when 
you are engineer-in-chief, to have your mistakes shown up by 
a subordinate?’ asked he. ‘Your engineer-in-chief will be 
a divisionary inspector before very long. As soon as one of us 
makes some egregious blunder, the administration (which, of 
course, must never be in the wrong) withdraws the perpetrator 
from active service and makes him an inspector.’ That is 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTAgNAC. 


197 


how the reward due to a capable man becomes a sort of pre¬ 
mium on stupidity. 

“All France saw one disaster in the heart of Paris, the 
miserable collapse of the first suspension bridge which an 
engineer (a member of the Academie des Sciences, moreover) 
endeavored to construct, a collapse caused by blunders which 
would not have been made by the constructor of the Canal 
de Briare in the time of Henri IV., nor by the monk who 
built the Pont Royal. Him, too, the administration consoled 
by a summons to the Board of the General Council. 

“Arc the technical schools really manufactories of incom¬ 
petence? The problem requires prolonged observation. If 
there is anything in what 1 say, a reform is needed, at any 
rate in the way in which they are carried on, for I do not 
venture to question the usefulness of the Ecoles. Still, look¬ 
ing back over the past, does it appear that France has ever 
lacked men of great ability at need, or the talent she tries to 
hatch as required in these days by Monge’s method ? What 
school turned out Vauban save the great school called ‘ voca¬ 
tion ? ’ Who was Riquet’s master? When genius has raised 
itself above the social level, urged upwards by a vocation, it 
is almost always fully equipped; and in that case your man is 
no ‘specialist,’ but has something universal in his gift. I do 
not believe that any engineer who ever left the Ecole could 
build one of the miracles of architecture which Leonardo da 
Vinci reared ; Leonardo at once mechanician, architect, and 
painter, one of the inventors of hydraulic science, the inde¬ 
fatigable constructor of canals. They are so accustomed 
while yet in their teens to the bald simplicity of geometry, 
that by the time they leave the Ecole they have quite lost all 
feeling for grace or ornament; a column to their eyes is a 
useless waste of material; they return to the point where art 
begins—on utility they take their stand, and stay there. 

“But this is as nothing compared with the disease which is 
consuming me. I feel that a most terrible change is being 


198 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


wrought in me ; I feel that my energy and faculties, after the 
exorbitant strain put upon them, are dwindling and growing 
feeble. The influence of my humdrum life is creeping over 
me. After such eflbrts as mine, I feel that I am destined to 
do great things, and I am confronted by the most trivial task 
work, such as verifying yards of road-material, inspecting high¬ 
ways, checking inventories of stores. I have not enough to 
do to fill two hours in the day. 

“ I watch my colleagues marry and fall out of touch with 
modern thought. Is my ambition really immoderate? I 
should like to serve my country. My country required me to 
give proof of no ordinary powers, and bade me become an 
encyclopedia of the sciences—and here I am, folding my 
arms in an obscure corner of a province. I am not allowed 
to leave the place where I am penned up, to exercise my wits 
by trying new and useful experiments elsewhere. A vague 
indefinable grudge is the certain reward awaiting any one of 
us who follows his own inspirations, and does more than the 
department requires of him. The most that such a man 
ought to hope for is that his overweening presumption may be 
passed over, his talent neglected, while his project receives 
decent burial in the pigeon-holes at headquarters. What will 
Vicat’s reward be, I wonder ? (Between ourselves, Vicat is the 
only man among us who has made any real advance in the 
science of construction.) 

“ The General Council of Roads and Bridges is partly 
made up of men worn out by long and sometimes honorable 
service, but whose remaining brain-power only exerts itself 
negatively; these gentlemen erase anything that they cannot 
understand at their age, and act as a sort of extinguisher to be 
put when required on audacious innovations. The Council 
might have been created for the express purpose of paralyzing 
the arm of the generous younger generation, which only asks 
for leave to work, and would fain serve France. 

** Monstrous things happen in Paris. The future of a 


MADAME GRASLIN AT A/OJVTAGJVAC. 


199 


province hangs on the signature of these bureaucrats. I have 
not time to tell you all about the intrigues which balk the 
best schemes; for them the best schemes are, as a matter of 
fact, those which open up the best prospects of money-making 
to the greed of speculators and companies, which knock most 
abuses on the head, for abuses are always stronger than the 
spirit of improvement in France. In five years’ time my old 
self-will has ceased to rule. I shall see my ambitions die out 
in me, and my noble desire to use the faculties which my 
country bade me display, and then left to rust in my obscure 
corner. 

‘‘ Taking the most favorable view possible, my outlook 
seems to me to be very poor. I took advantage of leave of 
absence to come to Paris. I want to change my career, to 
find scope for my energies, knowledge, and activity. I shall 
send in my resignation, and go to some country where men 
with my special training are needed, where great things may 
be done. If none of all this is possible, I will throw in my 
lot with some of these new doctrines which seem as if they 
must make some great change in the present order of things, 
by directing the workers to better purpose. For what are we 
but laborers without work, tools lying idle in the warehouse ? 
We are organized as if it was a question of shaking the globe, 
and we are required to do—nothing. 

I am conscious that there is something great in me which 
is pining away and will perish; I tell you this with mathe¬ 
matical explicitness. But I should like to have your advice 
before I make a change in my condition. I look on myself 
as your son, and should never take any important step without 
consulting you, for your experience is as great as your good¬ 
ness. I know, of course, that when the government has ob¬ 
tained its specially trained men, it can no more set its en^ 
gineers to construct public monuments than it can declare war 
to give the army an opportunity of winning great battles and 
of finding out which are its great captains. But, then, as the 



200 


THE COUNTRY TARS ON. 


man has never failed to appear when circumstances called for 
him; as, at the moment when there is much money to be 
spent and great things to be done, one of these unique men 
of genius springs up from the crowd ; and as, particularly in 
matters of this kind, one Vauban is enough at a time, nothing 
could better demonstrate the utter uselessness of the institu¬ 
tion. In conclusion, when a picked man’s mental energies 
have been stimulated by all 'this preparation, how can the 
government help seeing that he will make any amount of 
struggle before he allows himself to be effaced? Is it wise 
policy? What is it but a way of kindling burning ambition? 
Would they bid all those perfervid heads learn to calculate 
anything and everything but the probabilities of their own 
futures ? 

“ There are, no doubt, exceptions among some six hundred 
young men, some firm and unbending characters, who decline 
to be withdrawn in this way from circulation. I know some 
of them; but if the story of their struggles with men and 
things could be told in full; if it were known how that, while 
full of useful projects and ideas which would put life and 
wealth into stagnant country districts, they meet with hin¬ 
drances put in their way by the very men who (so the govern¬ 
ment led them to believe) would give them help and counte¬ 
nance, the strong man, the man of talent, the. man whose 
nature is a miracle, would be thought a hundred times more 
unfortunate and more to be pitied than the man whose de¬ 
generate nature tamely resigns himself to the atrophy of his 
faculties. 

“ So I would prefer to direct some private commercial or 
industrial enterprise, and live on very little, while trying to 
find a solution of some one of the many unsolved problems 
of industry and modern life, rather than remain where I am. 
You will say that there is nothing to prevent me from employ¬ 
ing my powers as it is ; that in the silence of this humdrum 
life I might set myself to find the solution of one of those 


MADAME GRAS LIN AT MONT^GNAC. 


201 


problems which presses on humanity. Ah ! monsieur, do you 
not understand what the influence of the provinces is; the 
enervating effect of a life just sufficiently busy to fill the days 
with all but futile work, but yet not full enough to give occu¬ 
pation to the powers so fully developed by such a training as 
ours ? You will not think, my dear guardian, that I am eaten up 
with the ambition of money-making or consumed with a mad 
desire for fame. I have not learned to calculate to so little 
purpose that I cannot measure the emptiness of fame. The 
inevitable activity of life has led me not to think of mar¬ 
riage; and looking at my present prospects, I have not so 
good an opinion of existence as to give such a sorry present 
to another self. Although I look upon money as one of the 
most powerful instruments that can be put in the hands of a 
civilized man, money is, after all, only a means. My sole 
pleasure lies in the assurance that I am serving my country. 
To have employment for my faculties in a congenial atmo¬ 
sphere would be the height of enjoyment for me. Perhaps 
among your acquaintance in your part of the world, in the 
circle on which you shine, you might hear of something which 
requires some of the aptitude which you know that I possess; 
I will wait six months for an answer from you. 

These things which I am writing to you, dear patron and 
friend, others are thinking. I have seen a good many of my 
colleagues or old scholars at the Ecole caught, as I was, in 
the snare of a special training ; ordnance surveyors, captain- 
professors, captains in the artillery, doomed (as they see) to 
be captains for the rest of their days, bitterly regretting that 
they did not go into the regular army. Again and again, in 
fact, we have admitted to each other in confidence that we are 
victims of a long mystification, which we only discover when 
it is too late to draw back, when the mill-horse is used to the 
round and the sick man accustomed to his disease. 

‘‘After looking carefully into these melancholy results, I 
have asked myself the following questions, which I send to 


202 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


you, as a man of sense, whose mature wisdom will see all that 
lies in them, knowing that they are fruit of thought refined 
by the fires of painful experience. 

What end has the government in view? To obtain the 
best abilities ? If so, the government sets to work to obtain 
a directly opposite result : if it had hated talent, it could not 
have had better success in producing respectable mediocri¬ 
ties. Or does it intend to open out a career to selected 
intelligence ? It could not well have given it a more mediocre 
position. There is not a man sent out by the Ecoles who does 
not regret between fifty and sixty that he fell into the snare 
concealed by the offers of the government. Does it mean 
to secure men of genius? What really great man have the 
Ecoles turned out since 1790? Would Cachin, the genius 
to whom we owe Cherbourg, have existed but for Napoleon ? 
It was imperial despotism which singled him out; the Con¬ 
stitutional Administration would have stifled him. Does the 
Academie des Sciences number many members who have passed 
through the technical .schools? Two or three, it may be ; but 
the man of genius invariably appears from outside. In the 
particular sciences which are studied at these schools, genius 
obeys no laws but its own; it only develops under circum¬ 
stances over which we have no control; and neither the 
government nor anthropology knows the conditions. Riquet, 
Perronet, Leonardo da Vinci, Cachin, Palladio, Brunelleschi, 
Michel Angelo, Bramante, Vauban, and Vicat all derived their 
genius from unobserved causes and preparation to which we 
give the name of chance—the great word for fools to fall back 
upon. Schools or no schools, these sublime workers have 
never been lacking in every age. And now, does the govern¬ 
ment, by means of organizing, obtain works of public utility 
better done or at a cheaper rate ? 

‘‘In the first place, private enterprise does very well with¬ 
out professional engineers; and, in the second, state-directed 
works are the most expensive of all; and besides the actual 


MADAME GRASLIET AT MONTAGNAC. 203 

outlay, there is the cost of the maintenance of the great staff 
of the Roads and Bridges Department. Finally, in other 
countries where they have no institutions of this kind, in Ger¬ 
many, England, and Italy, such public works are carried out 
quite as well, and cost less than ours in France. Each of the 
three countries is well known for new and useful inventions 
of this kind. I know it is the fashion to speak of our Ecoles 
as if they were the envy of Europe; but Europe has been 
watching us these fifteen years, and nowhere will you find the 
like instituted elsewhere. The English, those shrewd men of 
business, have better schools among their working classes, 
where they train practical men, who become conspicuous at 
once when they rise from practical work to theory. Stephen¬ 
son and Macadam were not pupils in these famous institutions 
of ours. 

But where is the use ? When young and clever engineers, 
men of spirit and enthusiasm, have solved at the outset of 
their career the problem of the maintenance of the roads 
of France, which requires hundreds of millions of francs 
every twenty-five years, which roads are in a deplorable state, 
it is in vain for them to publish learned treatises and memo¬ 
rials; everything is swallowed down by the board of direction, 
everything goes in and nothing comes out of a central bureau 
in Paris, where the old men are jealous of their juniors, and 
high-places are refuges for superannuated blunderers. 

‘‘This is how, with a body of educated men distributed all 
over France, a body which is part of the machinery of admin¬ 
istrative government, and to whom the country looks for 
direction and enlightenment on the great questions within 
: their department, it will probably happen that we in France 
shall still be talking about railways when other countries have 
finished theirs. Now, if ever France ought to demonstrate 
the excellence of her technical schools as an institution, 
should it not be in a magnificent public work of this special 
kind, destined to change the face of many countries, and to 


204 


THE COUNTRY PARSON, 


double the length of human life by modifying the laws of 
time and space ? Belgium, the United States, Germany, and 
England, without an Ecole Polytechnique, will have a network 
of railways while our engineers are still tracing out the plans, 
and hideous jobbery lurking behind the projects will check 
^ their execution. You cannot lay a stone in France until half 
a score of scribblers in Paris have drawn up a driveling 
report that nobody wants. The government, therefore, gets 
no good of its technical schools ; and as for the individual 
—he is tied down to a mediocre career, his life is a cruel 
delusion. Certain it is that with the abilities which he dis¬ 
played between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five he would 
have gained more reputation and riches if he had been left to 
shift for himself than he will acquire in the career to which 
government condemns him. As a merchant, a scientific man, 
or a soldier, this picked man would have a wide field before 
him, his precious faculties and enthusiasm would not have 
been prematurely and stupidly exhausted. Then where is the 
advance ? Assuredly the individual and the state both lose by 
the present system. Does not an experiment carried on for 
half a century show that changes are needed in the way the 
institution is worked? What priesthood qualifies a man for 
the task of selecting from a whole generation those who shall 
hereafter be the learned class of France? What studies 
should not these high-priests of destiny have made ? A 
knowledge of mathematics is, perhaps, scarcely so necessary 
as physiological knowledge ; and does it not seem to you that 
something of that clairvoyance which is the wizardry of great 
men might be required too ? As a matter of fact, the exam¬ 
iners are old professors, men worthy of all honor, grown old 
in harness; their duty it is to discover the best memories, and 
there is an end of it; they can do nothing but what is 
required of thern. Truly, their functions should be the most 
important ones in the state, and call for extraordinary men to 
fulfill them. 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT^GNAC. 


205 


“ Do not think, my dear friend and patron, that my censure 
is confined to the Ecole through which I myself passed ; it 
applies not only to the institution itself, but also and still 
more to the methods by which lads are admitted; that is to 
say, to the system of competitive examination. Competition 
is a modern invention, and essentially bad. It is bad not 
only in learning, but in every possible connection, in the arts, 
in every election made of men, projects, or things. It is 
unfortunate that our famous schools should not have turned 
out better men than any other chance assemblage of lads; but 
it is still more disgraceful that among the prizemen at the 
institute there has been no great painter, musician, architect, 
or sculptor; even as for the past twenty years the general 
elections have swept no single great statesman to the front out 
of all the shoals of mediocrities. My remarks have a bearing 
upon an error which is vitiating both politics and education in 
France. This cruel error is based on the following principle, 
which organizers have overlooked : 

‘ ‘ ‘ Nothing in experience or in the nature of things can war¬ 
rant the assumption that the intellectual qualities of early man¬ 
hood will be those of maturity. ’ 

“ At the present time I have been brought in contact with 
several distinguished men who are studying the many moral 
maladies which prey upon France. They recognize, as I do, 
the fact that secondary education forces a sort of temporary 
capacity in those who have neither present work nor future 
prospects; and that the enlightenment diffused by primary 
education is of no advantage to the state, because it is bereft 
of belief and sentiment. 

‘‘ Our whole educational system calls for sweeping reform, 
which should be carried out under the direction of a man of 
profound knowledge, a man with a strong will, gifted with 
that legislative faculty which, possibly, is found in Jean- 
Jacques Rousseau alone of all moderns. 

“ Then, perhaps, the superfluous specialists might find em- 


206 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


ployment in elementary teaching; it is badly needed by the 
mass of the people. We have not enough patient and devoted 
teachers for the training of these classes. The deplorable preva¬ 
lence of crimes and misdemeanors points to a weak spot in our 
social system—the one-sided education which tends to weaken 
the fabric of society, by teaching the masses to think suffi¬ 
ciently to reject the religious beliefs necessary for their govern¬ 
ment, yet not enough to raise them to a conception of the 
theory of obedience and duty, which is the last word of 
transcendental philosophy. It is impossible to put a whole 
nation through a course of Kant; and belief and use and 
wont are more wholesome for the people than study and argu¬ 
ment. 

“ If I had to begin again from the very beginning, I dare 
say I might enter a seminary and incline to the life of a simple 
country parson or a village schoolmaster. But now I have 
gone too far to be a mere elementary teacher; and, besides, a 
wider field of action is open to me than the schoolhouse or 
the parish. I cannot go the whole way with the Saint-Simon- 
ians, with whom I am tempted to throw in my lot; but with 
all their mistakes, they have laid a finger on many weak points 
in our social system, the results of our legislation, which will 
be palliated rather than remedied—simply putting off the evil 
day for France. Good-bye, dear sir; in spite of these ob¬ 
servations of mine, rest assured of my respectful and faithful 
friendship, a friendship which can only grow with time. 

‘‘Gregoire Gerard.” 

Acting on old business habit, Grossetete had indorsed the 
letter with the rough draft of a reply, and written beneath it 
the sacramental word “Answered.” 

“ My dear Gerard :—It is the more unnecessary to enter 
upon any discussion of the observations contained in your 
letter, since that chance (to make use of the word for fools) 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT^GNAC. 207 

enables me to make you an offer which will practically extricate 
you from a position in which you find yourself so ill at ease. 
Mme. Graslin, who owns the forest of Montegnac, and a good 
deal of barren land- below the long range of hills on which 
the forest lies, has a notion of turning her vast estates to some 
account, of exploiting the woods and bringing the stony 
land into cultivation. Small pay and plenty of work! A 
great result to be brought about by insignificant means, a 
district to be transformed ! Abundance made to spring up on 
the barest rock ! Is not this what you wished to do, you 
who would fain realize a poet’s dream ? From the sincere 
ring of your letter, I do not hesitate to ask you to come to 
Limoges to see me, but do not send in your resignation, my 
friend, only sever your connection with your corps, explain to 
the authorities that you are about to make a study of some prob¬ 
lems that lie within your province, but outside the limits of 
your work for the government. In that way you will lose 
none of your privileges, and you will gain time in which to 
decide whether this scheme of the curd’s at Montegnac, which 
finds favor in Mme. Graslin’s eyes, is a feasible one. If 
these vast changes should prove to be practicable, I will lay 
the possible advantages before you by word of mouth, and 
not by letter. Believe me to be always sincerely your friend, 

‘^Grossetete.” 


For all reply Mme. Graslin wrote: 

Thank you, my friend; I am waiting to see your 
protege.” 

She showed the letter to M. Bonnet, with the remark, 

Here is one more wounded creature seeking the great 
hospital ! ” 

The curd read the letter and re-read it, took two or three 
turns upon the terrace, and handed the paper back to Mme. 
Graslin. 


208 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


It comes from a noble nature, the man has something in 
him,” he said. “ He writes that the schools, invented by the 
spirit of the Revolution, manufacture inaptitude; for my own 
part, I call them manufactories of unbelief; for if M. Gerard 
is not an atheist, he is a Protestant-” 

“ We will ask him,” she said, struck with the cure’s answer. 

A fortnight later, in the month of December, M. Gros- 
setSte came to Montegnac, in spite of the cold, to introduce 
his protege. Veronique and M. Bonnet awaited his arrival 
with impatience. 

‘‘One must love you very much, my child,” said the old 
man, taking both of Veronique’s hands, and kissing them 
with the old-fashioned elderly gallantry which a woman never 
takes amiss; “yes, one must love you very much indeed to 
stir out of Limoges in such weather as this; but I had made up 
my mind that I must come in person to make you a present of 
M. Gregoire Gerard. Here he is. A man after your own 
heart, M. Bonnet,” the old banker added with an affectionate 
greeting to the cur6. 

Gerard’s appearance was not very prepossessing. He was 
a thick-set man of middle height; his neck was lost in his 
shoulders, to use the common expression ; he had the golden 
hair and red eyes of an Albino ; and his eyelashes and eye¬ 
brows were almost white. Although, as often happens in 
these cases, his complexion was dazzlingly fair, its original 
beauty was destroyed by the very apparent pits and seams left 
by an attack of smallpox ; much reading had doubtless injured 
his eyesight, for he wore colored spectacles. Nor when he 
divested himself of a thick overcoat, like a gendarme’s, did 
his dress redeem these personal defects. 

The way in which his clothes were put on and buttoned, 
like his untidy cravat and crumpled shirt, were distinctive 
signs of that personal carelessness, laid to the charge of 
learned men, who are all, more or less, oblivious of their sur- 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT^GNAC. 


209 


roundings. His face and bearing, the great development of 
chest and shoulders, as compared with his thin legs, suggested 
a sort of physical deterioration produced by meditative 
habits, not uncommon in those who think much; but the 
stout heart and eager intelligence of the writer of the letter 
were plainly visible on a forehead which might have been 
chiseled in Carrara marble. Nature seemed to have reserved 
her seal of greatness for the brow, and stamped it with the 
steadfastness and goodness of the man. The nose was of the 
true Gallic type, and blunted. The firm, straight lines of the 
mouth indicated an absolute discretion and the sense of 
economy; but the whole face looked old before its time, and 
worn with study. 

Mine: Graslin turned to speak to the inventor. “ We 
already owe you thanks, monsieur,” she said, “for being so 
good as to come to superintend engineering work in a country 
which can hold out no inducements to you save the satisfac¬ 
tion of knowing that you can do good.” 

“ M. Grossetete told me enough about you on our way 
here, madame,” he answered, “ to make me feel very glad to 
be of any use to you. The prospect of living near to you and 
M. Bonnet seemed to be charming. Unless I am driven 
away, I look to spend my life here.” 

“ We will try to give you no cause for changing your 
opinion,” said Mme. Graslin. 

Grossetete took her aside. “ Here are the papers which the 
public prosecutor gave me,” he said. “ He seemed very 
much surprised that you did not apply directly to him. All 
that you have asked has been done promptly and with good¬ 
will. In the first place, your protege will be reinstated in all 
his rights as a citizen ; and, in the second, Catherine Curieux 
will be sent to you in three months’ time.” 

“ Where is she ? ” asked Veronique. 

“ At the Hopital Saint-Louis,” Grossetete answered. “She 
cannot leave Paris until she is recovered.” 

14 


210 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘‘ Ah ! is she ill, poor thing? 

You will find all that you want to know here,” said 
Grossetete, holding out a packet. 

Veronique went back to her guests, and led the way to the 
magnificent dining-hall on the ground floor, walking between 
Grossetete and Gerard. She presided over the dinner with¬ 
out joining them, for she had made it a rule to take her 
meals alone since she had come to Montegnac. No one but 
Aline was in the secret, which the girl kept scrupulously until 
her mistress was in danger of her life. 

The mayor of Montegnac, the justice of the peace, and the 
doctor had naturally been invited to meet the newcomer. 

The doctor, a young man of seven-and-twenty, Roubaud 
by name, was keenly desirous of making the acquaintance of 
the great lady of Limousin. The cure was the better pleased 
to introduce him at the chateau since it was M. Bonnet’s wish 
that Veronique should gather some sort of society about her, 
to distract her thoughts from herself, and to find some mental 
food. Roubaud was one of the young doctors perfectly 
equipped in his science, such as the Ecole de Medecine turns 
out in Paris, a man who might, without doubt, have looked 
to a brilliant future in the vast theatre of the capital; but he 
had seen something of the strife of ambitions there, and took 
fright, conscious that he had more knowledge than capacity 
for scheming, more aptitude than greed; his gentle nature 
had inclined him to the narrower theatre of provincial life, 
where he hoped to win appreciation sooner than in Paris. 

At Limoges Roubaud had come into collision with old- 
fashioned ways and patients not to be shaken in their preju¬ 
dices ; he had been won over by M. Bonnet, who at sight of 
the kindly and prepossessing face had thought that here was 
a worker to co-operate with him. Roubaud was short and 
fair-haired, and would have been rather uninteresting looking 
but for the gray eyes, which revealed the physiologist’s 
sagacity and the perseverance of the student. Hitherto 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC, 


211 


Montegnac was fain to be content with an old army surgeon, 
who found his cellars a good deal more interesting than his 
patients, and who, moreover, was past the hard work of a 
country doctor. He happened to die just at that time. 
Roubaud had been in Montegnac for some eighteen months, 
and was very popular there; but Desplein’s young disciple, 
one of the followers of Cabanis, was no Catholic, in his 
beliefs. In fact, as to religion, he had lapsed into a fatal 
indifference, from which he was not to be roused. He was 
the despair of the cure, not that there was any harm whatever 
in him, his invariable absence from church was excused by his 
profession, he never talked on religious topics, he was incapa¬ 
ble of making proselytes, no good Catholic could have be¬ 
haved better than he, but he declined to occupy himself with 
a problem which, to his thinking, was beyond the scope of the 
human mind; and the cure once hearing him let fall the 
remark that Pantheism was the religion of all great thinkers, 
fancied that Roubaud inclined to the Pythagorean doctrine 
of the transformation of souls. 

Roubaud, meeting Mme. Graslin for the first time, felt vio¬ 
lently startled at the sight of her. His medical knowledge 
enabled him to divine in her face and bearing and worn fea¬ 
tures unheard-of suffering of mind and body, a preternatural 
strength of character, and the great faculties which can endure 
the strain of very different vicissitudes. He, in a manner, 
read her inner history, even the dark places deliberately hid¬ 
den away; and more than this, he saw the disease that preyed 
upon the secret heart of this fair woman ; for there are certain 
tints in human faces that indicate a poison working in the 
thoughts, even as the color of fruit will betray the presence 
of the worm at its core. From that time forward M. Roubaud 
felt so strongly attracted to Mme. Graslin, that he feared to 
be drawn beyond the limit where friendship ends. There was 
an eloquence, which men always understand, in Veronique’s 
brows and attitude, and, above all, in her eyes; it was suffi- 


212 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


ciently unmistakable that she was dead to love, even as other 
women with a like eloquence proclaim the contrary. The 
doctor became her chivalrous worshiper on the spot. He 
exchanged a swift glance with the cure, and M. Bonnet said 
within himself— 

“ Here is the flash from heaven that will change this 
poor unbeliever? Mme. Graslin will have more eloquence 
than I.” 

The mayor, an old countryman, overawed by the splendor 
of the dining-room, and surprised to be asked to meet one of 
the richest men in the department, had put on his best clothes 
for the occasion; he felt somewhat uneasy in them, and 
scarcely more at ease with his company. Mme. Graslin, too, 
in her mourning dress was an awe-inspiring figure ; the worthy 
mayor was dumb. He had once been a farmer at Saint- 
Leonard, had bought the one habitable house in the township, 
and cultivated the land that belonged to it himself. He could 
read and write, but only managed to acquit himself in his 
oflicial capacity with the help of the justice’s clerk, who pre¬ 
pared his work for him; so he ardently desired the advent of 
a notary, meaning to lay the burden of his public duties on 
official shoulders when that day should come; but Montegnac 
was so poverty-stricken that a resident notary was hardly 
needed, and the notaries of the principal place in the arron- 
dissement found clients in Montegnac. 

The justice of the peace, Clousier by name, was a retired 
barrister from Limoges. Briefs had grown scarce with the 
learned gentleman, owing to a tendency on his part to put in 
practice the noble maxim that a barrister is the first judge of 
the client and the case. About the year 1809 he obtained 
this appointment; the salary was a meagre pittance, but 
enough to live upon. In this way he had reached the most 
honorable but the most complete penury. Twenty-two years 
of residence in the poor commune had transformed the worthy 
lawyer into a countryman, scarcely to be distinguished from 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTAgNAC. 213 

any of the small farmers round about, whom he resembled 
even in the cut of his coat. But beneath Clousier’s homely 
exterior dwelt a clairvoyant spirit, a philosophical politician 
whose Gallio’s attitude was due to his perfect knowledge of 
human nature and of men’s motives. For a long time he had 
baffled M. Bonnet’s perspicacity. The man who, in a higher 
sphere, might have played the active part of a L’Hopital, in¬ 
capable of intrigue, like all deep thinkers, had come at last 
to lead the contemplative life of a hermit of olden time. 
Rich without doubt with all the gains of privation, he was 
swayed by no personal considerations; he knew the law, and 
judged impartially. His life, reduced to the barest neces¬ 
saries, was regular and pure. The peasants loved and re¬ 
spected M. Clousier for the fatherly disinterestedness with 
which he settled their disputes and gave advice in even their 
smallest difficulties. For the last two years “ Old Clousier,” 
as every one called him in Montegnac, had had one of his 
nephews to help him, a rather intelligent young man, who, at 
a later day, contributed not a little to the prosperity of the 
commune. 

The most striking thing about the old man’s face was the 
broad vast forehead. Two bushy masses of white hair stood 
out on either side of it. A florid complexion and magiste¬ 
rial portliness might give the impression that (in spite of his 
real sobriety) he was as earnest a disciple of Bacchus as of 
Troplong and Toullier. His scarcely audible voice indicated 
asthmatic oppression of breathing; possibly the dry air of 
Montegnac had counted for something in his decision when 
he made up his mind to accept the post. His little house had 
been fitted up for him by the well-to-do sabot-maker, his land¬ 
lord. 

Clousier had already seen Veronique at the church, and 
had formed his own opinion of her, which opinion he kept to 
himself; he had not even spoken of her to M. Bonnet, with 
whom he was beginning to feel at home. For the first time in 

U 


214 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


his life, the justice of the peace found himself in the company 
of persons able to understand him. 

When the six guests had taken their places round a hand¬ 
somely-appointed table (for Veronique had brought all her 
furniture with her to Montegnac), there was a brief embar¬ 
rassed pause. The doctor, the mayor, and the justice were 
none of them acquainted with Grossetete or with Gerard. 
But during the first course the banker’s geniality thawed the 
ice. Mine. Graslin graciously encouraged M. Roubaud and 
drew out Gerard; under her influence all these different 
natures, full of exquisite qualities, recognized their kinship. 
It was not long before each felt himself to be in a congenial 
atmosphere. So that by the time dessert was put on the table, 
and the crystal and the gilded edges of the porcelain sparkled, 
when choice wines were set in circulation, handed to the 
guests by Aline, Maurice Champion, and Grosset^te’s man, 
the conversation had become more confidential, so that the four 
noble natures thus brought together by chance felt free to 
speak their real minds on the great subjects that men love to 
discuss in good faith. 

“ Your leave of absence coincided with the Revolution of 
July,” Grossetete said, looking at Gerard in a way that asked 
his opinion. 

‘‘Yes,” answered the engineer. “I was in Paris during 
the three famous days; I saw it all; I drew some disheart¬ 
ening conclusions.” 

“What were they?” M. Bonnet asked quickly. 

“There is no patriotism left except under the workman’s 
shirt,” answered Gerard. “ Therein lies the ruin of France. 
The Revolution of July is the defeat of men who are notable 
for birth, fortune, and talent, and a defeat in which they 
acquiesce. The enthusiastic zeal of the masses has gained a 
victory over the rich and intelligent classes, to whom zeal and 
enthusiasm are antipathetic.” 

“To judge by last year’s events,” added M. Clousier, “the 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 215 

change is a direct encouragement to the evil which is devour¬ 
ing us—to individualism. In fifty years’ time every generous 
question will be replaced by a ‘ IV/ia^ is that to me?' the 
watchword of independent opinion descended from the spiri¬ 
tual heights where Luther, Calvin, Zwingle, and Knox inau¬ 
gurated it, till even in political economy each has a right to 
his own opinion. Each for himself I Let each man mind his 
own business !—these two terrible phrases, together with What 
is that to me ? complete a trinity of doctrine for the bour¬ 
geoisie and the peasant proprietors. This egoism is the result 
of defects in our civil legislation, somewhat too hastily accom¬ 
plished in the first instance, and now confirmed by the terrible 
consecration of the Revolution of July.” 

The justice relapsed into his wonted silence again with this 
speech, which gave the guests plenty to think over. Then M. 
Bonnet ventured yet further, encouraged by Clousier’s re¬ 
marks, and by a glance exchanged between Gerard and 
Grosset^te. 

‘^Good King Charles X.,” said he, has just failed in the 
most provident and salutary enterprise that king ever under¬ 
took for the happiness of a nation intrusted to him. The 
Church should be proud of the share she had in his councils. 
But it was the heart and brain of the upper classes which failed 
him, as they had failed before over the great question of the 
law with regard to the succession of the eldest son, the eternal 
honor of the one bold statesman of the Restoration—the 
Comte de Peyronnet. To reconstruct the nation on the basis 
of the family, to deprive the press of its power to do harm 
without restricting its usefulness, to confine the elective cham¬ 
ber to the functions for which it was really intended, to give 
back to religion its influence over the people—such were the 
four cardinal points of the domestic policy of the House of 
Bourbon. Well, in twenty years’ time all France will see the 
necessity of that great and salutary course. King Charles X. 
was, moreover, more insecure in the position which he decided 


21S 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


to quit than in the position in which his paternal authority 
came to an end. The future history of our fair country, when 
everything shall be periodically called in question, when cease¬ 
less discussion shall take the place of action, when the press 
shall become the sovereign power and the tool of the basest 
ambitions, will prove the wisdom of the king who has just 
taken with him the real principles of government. History 
will render to him his due for the courage with which he with¬ 
stood his best friends, when once he had probed the wound, 
seen its extent, and the pressing necessity for the treatment, 
which has not been continued by those for whom he threw 
himself into the breach.” 

** Well, M. le Cure, you go straight to the point without 
the slightest disguise,” cried M. Gerard, ** but I do not say 
nay. When Napoleon made his Russian campaign he was 
forty years ahead of his age; he was misunderstood. Russia 
and England, in 1830, can explain the campaign of 1812. 
Charles X. was in the same unfortunate position ; twenty-five 
years hence his ordinances may perhaps become law.” 

France, too eloquent a country not to babble, too vain¬ 
glorious to recognize real ability, in spite of the sublime good 
sense of her language and the mass of her people, is the very 
last country in which to introduce the system of two deliber¬ 
ating chambers,” the justice of the peace remarked. ^‘At 
any rate, not without the admirable safeguards against these 
elements in the national character, devised by Napoleon’s 
experience. The representative system may work in a country 
like England, where its action is circumscribed by the nature 
of the soil; but the right of primogeniture, as applied to real 
estate, is a necessary part of it; without this factor, the repre¬ 
sentative system becomes sheer nonsense. England owes its 
existence to the quasi-feudal law which transmitted the house 
and lands to the oldest son. Russia is firmly seated on the 
feudal system of autocracy. For these reasons, both nations 
at the present day are making alarming progress. Austria 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GMAC. 


217 


could not have resisted our invasions as she did, nor declared 
a second war against Napoleon, had it not been for the law of 
primogeniture, which preserves the strength of the family and 
maintains production on the large scale necessary to the state. 
The House of Bourbon, conscious that liberalism had relegated 
France to the rank of a third-rate power in Europe, deter¬ 
mined to regain and keep their place, and the country shook 
off the Bourbons when they had all but saved the country. I 
do not know how deep the present state of things will sink us.” 

‘‘If there should be a war,” cried Grossetete, “ PTance 
will be without horses, as Napoleon was in 1813, when he was 
reduced to the resources of France alone, and could not 
make use of the victories of Lutzen and Bautzen, and was 
crushed at Leipsic ! If peace continues, the evil will grow 
worse: twenty years hence the number of horned cattle and 
horses in France will be diminished by one-half.” 

“ M. Grossetete is right,” said Gerard. “So the work 
which you have decided to attempt here is a service done to 
your country, madame,” he added, turning to Veronique. 

“Yes,” said the justice of the peace, “because Mme. 
Graslin has but one son. But will this chance in the succes¬ 
sion repeat itself? For a certain time, let us hope, the great 
and magnificent scheme of cultivation which you are to 
carry into effect will be in the hands of one owner, and there¬ 
fore will continue to provide grazing land for horses and 
cattle. But, in spite of all, a day will come when forest and 
field will be either divided up or sold in lots. Division and 
subdivision will follow, until the six thousand acres of plain 
will count ten or twelve hundred owners; and when that time 
comes there will be no more horses nor prize cattle.” 

“Oh ! when that time comes-” said the mayor. 

“There is a W/iat is that io me?" cried M. Grossetete, 
“and M. Clousier sounded the signal for it; he is caught in 
the act. But, monsieur,” the banker went on gravely, 
addressing the bewildered mayor, “ the time has come I 



218 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Round about Paris for a ten-league radius, the land is divided 
up into little patches that will hardly pasture sufficient milch 
cows. The commune of Argenteuil numbers thirty-eight 
thousand eight hundred and eighty-five plots of land, a good 
many of them bringing in less than fifteen centimes a year! 
If it were not for high farming and manure from Paris, which 
give heavy crops of fodder of different kinds, I do not know 
how cow-keepers and dairymen would manage. As it is, the 
animals are peculiarly subject to inflammatory diseases con¬ 
sequent on the heating diet and confinement to cow-sheds. 
They wear out their cows round about Paris just as they wear 
out horses in the streets. Then market-gardens, orchards, 
nurseries, and vineyards pay so much better than pasture, that 
the grazing land is gradually diminishing. A few years more, 
and milk will be sent in by express to Paris, like saltfish, and 
what is going on round Paris is happening also about all large 
towns. The evils of the minute subdivision of landed prop¬ 
erty are extending round a hundred French cities; some day 
all France will be eaten up by them. 

‘‘In 1800, according to Chaptal, there were about five 
million acres of vineyard; exact statistics would show fully 
five times as much to-day. When Normandy is split up into 
an infinitude of small holdings, by our system of inheritance 
fifty per cent, of the horse and cattle trade there will fall off; 
still Normandy will have the monopoly of the Paris milk 
trade, for luckily the climate will not permit vine culture. 
Another curious thing to notice is the steady rise in the price 
of butcher meat. In 1814, prices ranged from seven to 
eleven sous per pound ; in 1850, twenty years hence, Paris 
will pay twenty sous, unless some genius is raised up to carry 
out the theories of Charles X.” 

“You have pointed out the greatest evil in France,” said 
the justice of the peace. “ The cause of it lies in the chapter 
JDes Successions in the Civil Code, wherein the equal division 
of real estate among the children of the family is required. 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT^GNAC. 


219 


That is the pestle which is constantly grinding the country 
to powder, gives to every one but a life-interest in property 
which cannot remain as it is after his death. A continuous 
process of decomposition (for the reverse process is never set 
up) will end by ruining France. The French Revolution 
generated a deadly virus, and the Days of July have set the 
poison working afresh; this dangerous germ of disease is the 
acquisition of land by peasants. If the chapter Des Successions 
is the origin of the evil, it is through the peasant that it 
reaches its worst phase. The peasant never relinquishes the 
land he has won. Let a bit of land once get between the 
ogre’s ever-hungry jaws, he divides and subdivides it until there 
are but strips of three furrows left. Nay, even there he does 
not stop! he will divide the three furrows in lengths. The 
commune of Argenteuil, which M. Grosset^te instanced just 
now, is a case in point. The preposterous value which the 
peasants set on the smallest scraps of land makes it quite im¬ 
possible to reconstruct an estate. The law and procedure are 
made a dead letter at once by this division, and ownership is 
reduced to absurdity. But it is a comparatively trifling 
matter that the minute subdivision of the law should paralyze 
the treasury and the law by making it impossible to carry out 
its wisest regulations. There are far greater evils than even 
these. There are actually landlords of property bringing in 
fifteen and twenty centimes per annum 1 

^‘Monsieur has just said something About the falling off 
of cattle and horses,” Clousier continued, fook:»ug at Gros- 
setdte; ‘^the system of inheritance counts for muc/j in. that 
matter. The peasant proprietor keeps cows, and cows only, 
because milk enters into his diet; he sells the calves; he even 
sells butter. He has no mind to raise oxen, still less to breed 
horses; he has only just sufficient fodder for a year’s consump¬ 
tion ; and when a dry spring comes and hay is scarce, he is 
forced to take his cow to market; he cannot afford to keep 
her. If it should fall out so unluckily that two bad hay 


220 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


harvests came in succession, you would see some strange 
fluctuations in the price of beef in Paris, and, above all, in 
veal, when the third year came." 

“And how would they do for patriotic banquets then?" 
asked the doctor, smiling. 

“Ah!" exclaimed Mme. Graslin, glancing at Roubaud, 
“so even here, as everywhere else, politics must be served up 
with journalistic items." 

“In this bad business the bourgeoisie play the part of 
American pioneers," continued Clousier. “ They buy up the 
large estates, too large for the peasant to meddle with, and 
divide them. After the bulk has been cut up and triturated, 
a forced sale or an ordinary sale in lots hands it over sooner 
or later to the peasant. Everything nowadays is reduced to 
figures, and I know of none more eloquent than these: 
France possesses forty-nine million hectares of land, for the 
sake of convenience, let us say forty, deducting something for 
roads and high-roads, dunes, canals, land out of cultivation, 
and wastes like the plain of Montegnac, which need capital. 
Now, out of forty million hectares to a population of thirty- 
two millions, there are a hundred and twenty-five million 
parcels of land, according to the land-tax returns. I have 
not taken the fractions into account. So we have outrun the 
agrarian law, and yet neither poverty nor discord are at an 
end. Then the next thing will be that those who are turning 
the land into crumbs and diminishing the output of produce 
will find mouthpieces for the cry that true social justice only 
permits the usufruct of the land to each. They will say that 
ownership in perpetuity is robbery. The Saint-Simonians 
have begun already." 

“ There spoke the magistrate," said Grosset^te, “ and this 
is what the banker adds to his bold reflections. When landed 
property became tenable by peasants and small shopkeepers, a 
great wrong was done to France, though the government does 
not so much as suspect it. Suppose that we set down the 


MADAME GRASLIN AT M0N7'£GNAC, 


221 


whole mass of the peasants at three million families, after 
deducting the paupers. Those families all belong to the wage¬ 
earning class. Their wages are paid in money instead of in 
kind-” 

“There is another immense blunder in our legislation,” 
Clousier cried, breaking in on the banker. “In 1790 it 
might still have been possible to pass a law empowering 
employers to pay wages in kind, but now—to introduce 
such a measure would be to risk a revolution.” 

“In this way,” Grossetdte continued, “the money of the 
country passes into the pockets of the proletariat. Now, the 
peasant has one passion, one desire, one determination, one 
aim in life—to die a landed proprietor. This desire, as M. 
Clousier has very clearly shown, is one result of the Revolu¬ 
tion—a direct consequence of the sale of the national lands. 
Only those who have no idea of the state of things in country 
districts could refuse to admit that each of those three million 
families annually buries fifty francs as a regular thing, and in 
this way a hundred and fifty millions of francs are withdrawn 
from circulation every year. The science of political econ¬ 
omy has reduced to an axiom the statement that a five-franc 
piece, if it passes through a hundred hands in the course of a 
day, does duty for five hundred francs. Now, it is certain for 
some of us old observers of the state of things in country 
districts that the peasant fixes his eyes on a bit of land, keeps 
ready to pounce upon it, and bides his time—meanwhile he 
never invests his capital. The intervals in the peasant’s land- 
purchases should, therefore, be reckoned at periods of seven 
years. For seven years, consequently, a capital of eleven 
hundred million francs is lying idle in the peasants’ hands; 
and as the lower middle classes do the same thing to quite the 
same extent, and behave in the same way with regard to 
land on too large a scale for the peasant to nibble at, in forty- 
two years France loses the interest on two milliards of francs 
at least—that is to say, on something like a hundred millions 



222 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


every seven years, or six hundred millions in forty-two years. 
But this is not the only loss. France has failed to create the 
worth of six hundred millions in agricultural or industrial 
produce. And this failure to produce may be taken as a loss 
of twelve hundred million francs ; for if the market price of 
a product were not double the actual cost of production, com¬ 
merce would be at a standstill. The proletariat deprives itself 
of six hundred million francs of wages. These six hundred 
millions of initial loss that represent, for an economist, 
twelve hundred millions of loss of benefit derived from circu¬ 
lation, explain how it is that our commerce, shipping trade, 
and agriculture compare so badly with the state of things in 
England. In spite of the differences between the two countries 
(a good two-thirds of them, moreover, in our favor), England 
could mount our cavalry twice over, and every one there 
eats meat. But then, under the English system of land- 
tenure, it is almost impossible for the working classes to 
buy land, and so all the money is kept in constant circulation. 
So besides the evils of the comminution of the land, and 
the decay of the trade in cattle, horses, and sheep, the 
chapter Des Successions costs us a further loss of six hundred 
million francs of interest on the capital buried by the peasants 
and trades-people, or twelve hundred million francs’ worth of 
produce (at the least)—that is to say, a total loss of three 
milliards of francs withdrawn from circulation every half- 
century.” 

“ The moral effect is worse than the material effect! ” 
cried the cure. “ We are turning the peasantry into pauper 
landowners, and half educating the lower middle classes. It 
will not be long before the canker of Each for himself! Let 
each mind his own business / which did its work last July among 
the upper classes, will spread to the middle classes. A pro¬ 
letariat of hardened materialists, knowing no God but envy, 
no zeal but the despair of hunger, with no faith nor belief 
left, will come to the front, and trample the heart of the 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTilGNAC, 


223 


country under foot. The foreigner, waxing great under a 
monarchical government, will find us under the shadow of 
royalty without the reality of a king, without law under the 
cover of legality, owners of property but not proprietors, with 
the right of election but without a government, listless holders 
of free and independent opinions, equal but equally unfor¬ 
tunate. Let us hope that between now and then God will 
raise up in France the man for the time, one of those elect 
who breathe a new spirit into a nation, a man who, whether 
he is a Sylla or a Marius, whether he comes from the heights 
or rises from the depths, will reconstruct society.” 

“The first thing to do will be to send him to the assizes 
or to the police court,” said Gerard. “The judgment of 
Socrates or of Christ will be given to him, here in 1831, as of 
old in Attica and at Jerusalem. To-day, as of old, jealous 
mediocrity allows the thinker to starve. If the great political 
physicians who have studied the diseases of France, and are 
opposed to the spirit of the age, should resist to the starva¬ 
tion-point, we ridicule them, and treat them as visionaries. 
Here in France we revolt against the sovereign thinker, the 
great man of the future, just as we rise in revolt against the 
political sovereign.” 

“ But in those old times the Sophists had a very limited 
audience,” cried the justice of the peace; “while to-day, 
through the medium of the periodical press, they can lead 
a whole nation astray ; and the press which pleads for com¬ 
mon-sense finds no echo ! ” 

The mayor looked at M. Clousier with intense astonish¬ 
ment. Mme. Graslin, delighted to find a simple justice of the 
peace interested in such grave problems, turned to her neigh¬ 
bor, M. Roubaud, with, “Do you know M. Clousier?” 

“Not till to-day! Madame, you are working miracles,” 
he added in her ear. “And yet look at his forehead, how 
finely shaped it is ! It is like the classical or traditional 
brow that sculptors gave to Lycurgus and the wise men of 


224 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Greece, is it not? Clearly there was an impolitic side to the 
Revolution of July,” he added aloud, after going through Gros- 
set 4 te’s reasonings. He had been a medical student, and 
perhaps would have lent a hand at a barricade. 

’Twas trebly impolitic,” said Clousier. “ We have con¬ 
cluded the case for law and finance, now for the government. 
The royal power, weakened by the dogma of the national 
sovereignty, in virtue of which the election was made on the 
9th of August, 1830, will strive to overcome its rival, a prin¬ 
ciple which gives the people the right of changing a dynasty 
every time they fail to apprehend the intentions of their 
king; so there is a domestic struggle before us which will 
check progress in France for a long while yet.” 

England has wisely steered clear of all these sunken 
rocks,” said Gerard. have been in England. I admire 
the hive which sends swarms over the globe to settle and 
civilize. In England political debate is a comedy intended 
to satisfy the people and to hide the action of authority 
which moves untrammeled in its lofty sphere; election there 
is not, as in France, the referring of a question to a stupid 
bourgeoisie. If the land were divided up, England would 
cease to exist at once. The great landowners and the lords 
control the machinery of government. They have a navy 
which takes possession of whole quarters of the globe (and 
under the very eyes of Europe) to fulfill the exigencies of 
their trade, and form colonies for the discontented and 
unsatisfactory. Instead of waging war on men of ability, 
annihilating and underrating them, the English aristocracy 
continually seeks them out, rewards and assimilates them. 
The English are prompt to act in all that concerns the govern¬ 
ment, and in the choice of men and material, while with us 
action of any kind is slow ; and yet they are slow, and we 
impatient. Capital with them is adventurous, and always 
moving ; with us it is shy and suspicious. Flere is corrobora¬ 
tion of M. Grosset^te’s statements about the loss to industry 


MADAME GRASLtM AT MONTAgNAC. 


226 


of the peasants’ capital; I can sketch the difference in a few 
words. English capital, which is constantly circulating, has 
created ten milliards of wealth in the shape of expanded 
manufactures and joint-stock companies paying dividends; 
while here in France, though we have more capital, it has not 
yielded one-tenth part of the profit.” 

“ It is all the more extraordinary,” said Roubaud, since 
they are lymphatic, and we are generally either sanguine or 
nervous.” 

Here is a great problem for you to study, monsieur,” 
said Clousier. “ Given a national temperament, to find the 
institutions best adapted to counteract it. Truly, Cromwell 
was a great legislator. He, one man, made England what 
she is by promulgating the Act of Navigation, which made 
the English the enemy of all other nations, and infused into 
them a fierce pride, that has served them as a lever. But in 
spite of their garrison at Malta, as soon as France and Russia 
fully understand the part to be played in politics by the Black 
Sea and the Mediterranean, the discovery of a new route to 
Asia by way of Egypt or the Euphrates valley will be a death¬ 
blow to England, just as the discovery of the Cape of Good 
Hope was the ruin of Venice.” 

And nothing of God in all this ! ” cried the cur6. M. 
Clousier and M. Roubaud are quite indifferent in matters of 

religion- and you, monsieur?” he asked questioningly, 

turning to Gerard. 

“A Protestant,” said Grosset 4 te. 

^‘You guessed rightly!” exclaimed Veronique, with a 
glance at the cure as she offered her hand to Clousier to 
return to her apartments. 

All prejudices excited by M. Gerard’s appearance quickly 
vanished, and the three notables of Mont^gnac congratulated 
themselves on such an acquisition. 

‘‘Unluckily,” said M. Bonnet, “there is a cause for an¬ 
tagonism between Russia and the Catholic countries on the 
15 



226 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


shores of the Mediterranean ; a schism of little real impor¬ 
tance divides the Greek Church from the Latin, to the great 
misfortune of humanity." 

“ Each preaches for his saint," said Mme. Graslin, smiling. 

M. Grossetdte thinks of lost milliards; M. Clousier of law 
in confusion ; the doctor sees in legislation a question of 
temperaments j M. le Cure sees in religion an obstacle in the 
way of a good understanding between France and Russia." 

“ Please add, madame," said Gerard, “that in the seques¬ 
tration of capital by the peasant and small tradesman, I see 
the delay of the completion of railways in France-" 

“ Then what would you have ? " asked she. 

“ Oh ! The admirable Councilors of State who devised 
laws in the time of the Emperor and the CorJ>s legislatif, when 
those who had brains as well as those who had property had a 
voice in the election, a body whose sole function it was to 
oppose unwise laws or capricious wars. The present Chamber 
of Deputies is like to end, as you will see, by becoming the 
governing body, and legalized anarchy it will be." 

“ Great heavens ! " cried the cur6 in an excess of lofty 
patriotism, “ how is it that minds so enlightened "—he in¬ 
dicated Clousier, Roubaud, and Gerard—“see the evil, and 
point out the remedy, and do not begin by applying it to 
themselves ? All of you represent the classes attacked ; all of 
you recognize the necessity of passive obedience on the part 
of the great masses in the state, an obedience like that of the 
soldier in time of war; all of you desire the unity of authority, 
and wish that it shall never be called in question. But that 
consolidation to which England has attained through the de¬ 
velopment of pride and material interests (which are a sort of 
belief) can only be attained here by sentiments induced by 
Catholicism, and you are not Catholics ! I the priest drop 
my character, and reason with rationalists. 

“How can you expect the masses to become religious and 
to obey if they see irreligion and relaxed discipline around 


MADAME GEASLTN AT M0N7'£GNAC. 


227 


them? A people united by any faith will easily get the better 
of men without belief. The law of the interest of all, which 
underlies patriotism, is at once annulled by the law of indi¬ 
vidual interest, which authorizes and implants selfishness. 
Nothing is solid and durable but that which is natural, and 
the natural basis of politics is the family. The family should 
be the basis of all institutions. A universal effect denotes a 
coextensive cause. These things that you notice proceed 
from the social principle itself, which has no force, because it 
is based on independent opinion, and the right of private 
judgment is the forerunner of individualism. There is less 
wisdom in looking for the blessing of security from the intel¬ 
ligence and capacity of the majority than in depending upon 
the intelligence of institutions and the capacity of one single 
man for the blessing of security. It is easier to find wisdom 
in one man than in a whole nation. The peoples have but a 
blind heart to guide them; they feel, but they do not see. 
A government must see, and must not be swayed by senti¬ 
ments. There is therefore an evident contradiction between 
the first impulses of the masses and the action of authority 
which must direct their energy and give it unity. To find a 
great prince is a great chance (to use your language), but to 
trust your destinies to any assembly of men, even if they are 
honest, is madness. 

“ France is mad at this moment! Alas ! you are as thor¬ 
oughly convinced of this as I. If all men who really be¬ 
lieve what they say, as you do, would set the example in 
their own circle; if every intelligent thinker would set his 
hand to raising once more the altars of the great spiritual 
republic, of the one Church which has directed humanity, 
we might see once more in France the miracles wrought there 
by our fathers.” 

What would you have, M. le Cure? ” said Gtord, “ if one 
must speak to you as in the confessional—I look on faith as a 
lie which you consciously tell yourself, on hope as a lie about 


228 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


the future, and on this charity of yours as a child’s trick ; 
one is a good boy, for the sake of the jam.” 

And yet, monsieur, when hope rocks us we sleep well,” 
said Mme. Graslin. 

Roubaud, who was about to speak, supported by a glance 
from Grossetdte and the cure, stopped short, however, at the 
words. 

‘‘Is it any fault of ours,” said Clousier, “if Jesus Christ 
had not time to formulate a system of government in ac¬ 
cordance with His teaching, as Moses did and Confucius— 
the two greatest legislators whom the world has seen, for 
the Jews and the Chinese still maintain their national exist¬ 
ence, though the first are scattered all over the earth, and the 
second an isolated people ? ” 

“ Ah ! you are giving me a task indeed,” said the cure 
candidly, “ but I shall triumph, I shall convert all of you. 
You are much nearer the faith than you think. Truth lurks 
beneath the lie; come forward but a step, and you re¬ 
turn! ” 

And with this cry from the cur6 the conversation took a 
fresh direction. 

The next morning before M. Grossetete went, he promised 
to take an active share in Veronique’s schemes so soon as they 
should be judged practicable. Mme. Graslin and Gerard rode 
beside his traveling carriage as far as the point where the cross¬ 
road joined the high-road from Bordeaux to Lyons. Gerard 
was so eager to see the place, and Veronique so anxious to 
show it to him, that this ride had been planned overnight. 
After they took leave of the kind old man, they galloped down 
into the great plain and skirted the hillsides that lay between 
the chateau and the Living Rock. The surveyor recognized 
the rock embankment which Farrabesche had pointed out; it 
stood up like the lowest course of masonry under the founda¬ 
tions of the hills, in such a manner that when the bed of this 
indestructible canal of nature’s making should be cleared out, 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTilGNAC. 


229 


and the water-courses regulated so as not to choke it, irrigation 
would actually be facilitated by that long channel which lay 
about ten feet above the surface of the plain. The first thing 
to be done was to estimate the volume of water in the Gabou, 
and to make certain that the sides of the valley could hold it; 
no decision could be made till this was known. 

Veronique gave a horse to Farrabesche, who was to accom¬ 
pany Gerard and acquaint him with the least details which he 
himself had observed. After some days of consideration 
Gerard thought the base of either parallel chains of hill solid 
enough (albeit of different material) to hold the water. 

In the January of the following year, a wet season, Gerard 
calculated the probable amount of water discharged by the 
Gabou, and found that, when the three water-courses had been 
diverted into the torrent, the total amount would be sufficient 
to water an area three times as great as the plain of Montegnac. 
The dams across the Gabou, the masonry and engineering 
works needed to bring the water-supply of the three little 
valleys into the plain, should not cost more than sixty thou¬ 
sand francs; for the surveyor discovered a quantity of chalky 
deposit on the common, so that lime would be cheap, and the 
forest being so near at hand, stone and timber would cost 
nothing even for transport. All the preparations could be 
made before the Gabou ran dry, so that when the important 
work should be begun it should quickly be finished. But the 
plain was another matter. Gerard considered that there the 
first preparation would cost at least two hundred thousand 
francs, sowing and planting apart. 

The plain was to be divided into four squares of two hun¬ 
dred and fifty acres each. There was no question of breaking 
up the waste ; the first thing to do was to remove the largest 
flints. Navvies would be employed to dig a great number of 
trenches and to line the channels with stone to keep the water 
in, for the water must be made to flow or to stand as required. 
All this work called for active, devoted, and painstaking 


230 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


workers. Chance so ordered it that the plain was a straight* 
forward piece of work, a level stretch, and the water with a 
ten-foot fell could be distributed at will. There was nothing 
to prevent the finest results in farming the land ; here there 
might be just such a splendid green carpet as in North Italy, 
a source of wealth and of pride to Lombardy. Gerard sent 
to his late district for an old and experienced foreman, Fres- 
quin by name. 

Mme. Graslin, therefore, wrote to ask Grosset 4 te to negotiate 
for her a loan of two hundred and fifty thousand francs on the 
security of her government stock ; the interest of six years, 
G6rard calculated, should pay off the debt, capital and in¬ 
terest. The loan was concluded in the course of the month 
of March; and by that time Gerard, with Fresquin’s assist¬ 
ance, had finished all the preliminary operations, leveling, bor¬ 
ing, observations, and estimates. The news of the great scheme 
had spread through the country and roused the poor people; 
and the indefatigable Farrabesche, Colorat, Clousier, Roubaud, 
and the Mayor of Montegnac, all those, in fact, who were 
interested in the enterprise for its own sake or for Mme. 
Graslin’s, chose the workers or gave the names of the poor 
who deserved to be employed. 

G6rard bought partly for M. Grossetdte, partly on his own 
account, some thousand acres of land on the other side of the 
road through Montegnac, Fresquin, his foreman, also took 
five hundred acres, and sent for his wife and children. 

In the early days of April, 1833, M. Grosset&te came to 
Montegnac to see the land purchased for him by Gerard; but 
the principal motive of his journey was the arrival of Catherine 
Curieux. She had come by the diligence from Paris to 
Limoges, and Mme. Graslin was expecting her. Grosset^te 
found Mme. Graslin about to start for the church. M. Bonnet 
was to say a mass to ask the blessing of heaven on the work 
about to begin. All the men, women, and children were 
present. 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 


231 


M. Grosset^te brought forward a woman of thirty or there¬ 
abouts, who looked weak and out of health. ‘‘ Here is your 
protege,” he said, addressing Veronique. 

“ Are you Catherine Curieux?” Mme. Graslin asked. 

‘‘Yes, madame.” 

For a moment Veronique looked at her; Catherine was 
rather tall, shapely, and pale ; the exceeding sweetness of her 
features was not belied by the beautiful soft gray eyes. In the 
shape of her face and the outlines of her forehead there was a 
nobleness, a sort of grave and simple majesty, sometimes seen 
in very young girls’ faces in the country, a kind of flower of 
beauty, which field-work, and the constant wear of household 
cares, and sunburn, and neglect of appearance, wither with 
alarming rapidity. From her attitude as she stood it was 
easy to discern that she would move with the ease of a 
daughter of the fields and something of an added grace, un¬ 
consciously learned in Paris. If Catherine had never left the 
Corrdze, she would no doubt have been by this time a wrinkled 
and withered woman, the bright tints in her face would have 
grown hard; but Paris, which had toned down the high color, 
had preserved her beauty; and ill-health, weariness, and sor¬ 
row had given to her the mysterious gifts of melancholy and 
of that inner life of thought denied to poor toilers in the field 
who lead an almost animal existence. Her dress likewise 
marked a distinction between her and the peasants; for it 
abundantly displayed the Parisian taste which even the least 
coquettish women are so quick to acquire. Catherine Curieux, 
not knowing what might await her, and unable to Judge 
the lady in whose presence she stood, seemed somewhat 
embarrassed. 

“Do you still love Farrabesche?” asked Mme. Graslin, 
when Grosset^te left the two women together for a moment. 

“Yes, madame,” she answered, flushing red. 

“But if you sent him a thousand francs while he was in 
prison, why did you not come to him when he came out ? 


232 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Do you feel any repugnance for him ? Speak to me as you 
would to your own mother. Were you afraid that he had 
gone utterly to the bad ? that he cared for you no longer ? ” 
No, madame ; but I can neither read nor write. I was 
living with a very exacting old lady; she fell ill; we sat up 
with her of a night, and I had to nurse her. I knew the time 
was coming near when Jacques would be out of prison, but I 
could not leave Paris until the lady died. She left me nothing, 
after all my devotion to her and her interests. I had made 
myself ill with sitting up with her and the hard work of nurs¬ 
ing, and I wanted to get well again before I came back. I 
spent all my savings, and then I made up ray^ mind to go into 
the Hopital Saint-Louis, and have just been discharged as 
cured.” 

Mme. Graslin was touched by an explanation so simple. 

“Well, but, my dear,” she said, “tell me why you left 
your people so suddenly ; what made you leave your child ? 
why did you not send them news of you, or get some one to 
write-” 

For all answer, Catherine wept. 

“Madame,” she said at last, reassured by the pressure of 
Veronique’s hand, “I daresay I was wrong, but it was more 
than I could do to stop in the place. It was not that I felt 
I had done wrong; it was the rest of them ; I was afraid 
of their gossip and talk. So long as Jacques was here in 
danger, he could not do without me ; but when he was gone, 
I felt as if I could not stop. There was I, a girl with a child 
and no husband ! The lowest creature would have been better 
than I. If I had heard them say the least word about Ben¬ 
jamin or his father, I do not know what I should have done. 

I should have killed myself perhaps or gone out of my mind. 
My own father or mother might have said something hasty in 
a moment of anger. Meek as I am, I am too irritable to 
bear hasty words or insult. I have been well punished ; I 
could not see my child, and never a day passed but I thought 



MADAME GRAS LIN AT MONTJ^GNAC. 233 

of him ! I wanted to be forgotten, and forgotten I am. 
Nobody has given me a thought. They thought I was dead, 
and yet many and many a time I felt I could like to leave 

everything to have one day here and see my little boy-” 

Your little boy—see, Catherine, here he is!” replied 
Madame Graslin. 

Catherine looked up and saw Benjamin, and something like 
a feverish shiver ran through her. 

‘‘Benjamin,” said Mme. Graslin, “come and kiss your 
mother.” 

“My mother?” cried Benjamin in amazement. He flung 
his arms round Catherine’s neck, and she clasped him to her 
with wild energy. But the boy escaped, and ran away crying, 
“ I will find him 

Mme. Graslin, seeing that Catherine’s strength was failing, 
made her sit down ; and as she did so her eyes met M. 
Bonnet’s look, her color rose, for in that keen glance her 
confessor read her heart. She spoke tremulously. 

“I hope, M. le Cure,” she said, “that you will marry 
Catherine and Farrabesche at once. Do you not remember 
M. Bonnet, my child ? He will tell you that Farrabesche has 
behaved himself like an honest man since he came back. 
Every one in the countryside respects him ; if there is a place 
in the world where you may live happily with the gobd opinion 
of every one about you, it is here in Montegnac. With God’s 
will, you will make your fortune here, for you shall be my 
tenants. Farrabesche has all his citizen’s rights again.” 

“This is all true, my daughter,” said the cur6. 

As he spoke, Farrabesche came in, led by his eager son. 
Face to face with Catherine in Mme. Graslin’s presence, his 
face grew white, and he was mute. He saw how active the 
kindness of the one had been for him, and guessed all that 
the other had suffered in her enforced absence. Veronique 
turned to go with M. Bonnet, and the cur^ for his part wished 
to take Veronique aside. As soon as they were out of hearing, 


234 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


Veronique’s confessor looked full at her and saw her color 
rise; she lowered her eyes like a guilty creature. 

You are degrading charity,” he said severely. 

“ And how? ” she asked, raising her head. 

Charity,” said M. Bonnet, “ is a passion as far greater 
than love, as humanity, madame, is greater than one human 
creature. All this is not the spontaneous work of disinter¬ 
ested virtue. You are falling from the grandeur of the service 
of man to the service of a single creature. In your kindness 
to Catherine and Farrabesche there is an alloy of memories 
and after-thoughts which spoils it in the sight of God. Pluck 
out the rest of the dart of the spirit of evil from your heart. 
Do not spoil the value of your good deeds in this way. Will 
you ever attain at last to that holy ignorance of the good 
that you do, which is the supreme grace of man’s actions? ” 

Mme. Graslin turned away to dry her eyes. Her tears told 
the cure that his words had reached and probed some unhealed 
wound in her heart. Farrabesche, Catherine, and Benjamin 
came to thank their benefactress, but she made a sign to them 
to go away and leave her with M. Bonnet. 

“ You see how I have hurt them,” she said, bidding him 
see their disappointed faces. And the tender-hearted cure 
beckoned to them to come back. 

“You must be completely happy,” she said. “Here is the 
patent which gives you back all your rights as a citizen, and 
exempts you from the old humiliating formalities,” she added, 
holding out to Farrabesche a paper which she had kept. 
Farrabesche kissed Veronique’s hand. There was an expres¬ 
sion of submissive affection and quiet devotion in his eyes, 
the devotion which nothing could change, the fidelity of a 
dog for his master. 

“ If Jacques has suffered much, madame, I hope that it will 
be possible for me to make up to him in happiness for the 
trouble he has been through,” said Catherine; “for whatever 
be may have done, he is not bad,” 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTilGNAC, 


286 


Mrae. Graslin turned away her head. The sight of their 
happiness seemed to crush her. M. Bonnet left her to go to 
the church, and she dragged herself thither on M. Grosset^te’s 
arm. 

After breakfast, every one went to see the work begun. All 
the old people of Mont6gnac were likewise present. Veron- 
ique stood between M. Grosset 4 te and M. Bonnet on the top 
of the steep slope which the new road ascended, whence they 
could see the alignment of the four new roads, which served 
as a deposit for the stones taken off the land. Five navvies 
were clearing a space of eighteen feet (the width of each road), 
and throwing up a sort of embankment of good soil as they 
worked. Four men on either side were engaged in making a 
ditch, and these also made a bank of fertile earth along the 
edge of the field. Behind them came two men, who dug 
holes at intervals, and planted trees. In each division, thirty 
laborers (chosen from among the poor), twenty women, and 
forty girls and children, eighty-six workers in all, were busy 
piling up the stones which the workmen riddled out along the 
bank so as to measure the quantity produced by each group. 
In this way all went abreast, and with such picked and enthu¬ 
siastic workers rapid progress was being made. Grossetete 
promised to send some trees, and to ask for more, among 
Mme. Graslin’s friends. It was evident that there would not 
be enough in the nursery plantations at the chateau to supply 
such a demand. 

Towards the end of the day, which was to finish with a 
great dinner at the chateau, Farrabesche begged to speak with 
Mme. Graslin for a moment. Catherine came with him. 

“Madame,” he said, “you were so kind as to promise me 
the home farm. You meant to help me to a fortune when 
you granted me such a favor, but I have come round to 
Catherine’s ideas about our future. If I did well there, there 
would be jealousy; a word is soon said ; I might find things 
unpleasant, I am afraid, and, besides, C&therine would never 


236 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


feel comfortable; it would be better for us to keep to ourselves, 
in fact. So I have come just to ask you if you will give us the 
land about the mouth of the Gabou, near the common, to 
farm instead, and a little bit of the wood yonder under the 
Living Rock. You will have a lot of workmen thereabouts 
in July, and it would be easy then to build a farmhouse on a 
knoll in a good situation. We should be very happy. I 
would send for Guepin, poor fellow, when he comes out of 
prison; he would work like a horse, and it is likely I might 
find a wife for him. My man is no do-nothing. No one will 
come up there to stare at us; we will colonize that bit of land, 
and it will be my great ambition to make a famous farm for 
you there. Besides, I have come to suggest a tenant for 
your great farm—a cousin of Catherine’s, who has a little 
money of his own; he will be better able than I to look after 
such a big concern as that. In five years’ time, please God, 
you will have five or six thousand head of cattle or horses 
down there in the plain that they are breaking up, and it will 
really take a good head to look after it all.” 

Mme. Graslin recognized the good sense of Farrabesche’s 
request, and granted it. 

As soon as a beginning was made in the plain, Mme. 
Graslin fell into the even ways of a country life. She went 
to mass in the morning, watched over the education of the 
son whom she idolized, and went to see her workmen. After 
dinner she was at home to her friends in the little drawing¬ 
room on the first floor of the centre tower. She taught Rou- 
baud, Clousier, and the cur6 whist—Gerard knew the game 
already—and when the party broke up towards nine o’clock, 
every one went home. The only events in the pleasant life 
were the successes of the different parts of the great enterprise. 

June came, the bed of the Gabou was dry, Gerard had 
taken up his quarters in the old keeper’s cottage; for Farra¬ 
besche’s farmhouse was finished by this time, and fifty masons, 
obtained from Paris, were building a wall across the valley 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTilGNAC, 


237 


from side to side. The masonry was twenty feet thick at the 
base, gradually sloping away to half that thickness at the top, 
and the whole length of it was embedded in twelve feet of 
solid concrete. On the side of the valley Gerard added a 
course of concrete with a sloping surface twelve feet thick at 
the base, and a similar support on the side nearest the com¬ 
mons, covered with leaf-mold several feet deep, made a sub¬ 
stantial barrier which the flood-water could not break through. 
In case of a very wet season, Gerard contrived a channel at a 
suitable height for the overflow. Everywhere the masonry 
was carried down on the solid rock (granite, or tufa), that the 
water might not escape at the sides. By the middle of August 
the dam was finished. Meanwhile, Gerard also prepared 
three channels in the three principal valleys, and all of the 
undertakings cost less than the estimate. In this way the 
farm by the cliateau could be put in working order. 

The irrigation channels in the plain under Fresquin’s super¬ 
intendence corresponded with the natural canal at the base of 
the hills; all the water-courses departed thence. The great 
abundance of flints enabled him to pave all the channels, and 
sluices were constructed so that the water might be kept at 
the required height in them. 

Every Sunday after mass Veronique went down through the 
park with Gtord and the cure, the doctor, and the mayor, to 
see how the system of water-supply was working. The winter 
of 1833-1834 was very wet. The water from the three 
streams had been turned into the torrent, and the flood had 
made the valley of the Gabon into three lakes, arranged of set 
design one above the other, so as to form a reserve for times 
of great drought. In places where the valley widened out, 
Gerard had taken advantage of one or two knolls to make an 
island here and there, and to plant them with different trees. 
This vast engineering operation had completely altered the 
appearance of the landscape, but it would still be five or six 
years before it would take its true character. 


238 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


‘‘The land was quite naked,” Farrabesche used to say, 
“and now madame has clothed it.” After all these great 
changes, every one spoke of Veronique as “ madame” in the 
countryside. When the rains ceased in June, 1834, trial was 
made of the irrigation system in the part of the plain where 
seed had been sown; and the green growth thus watered was 
of the same fine quality as in an Italian marciiaj or a Swiss 
meadow. The method in use on farms in Lombardy had been 
employed ; the whole surface was kept evenly moist, and the 
plain was as even as a carpet. The nitre in the snow, dis¬ 
solved in the water, doubtless contributed not a little to the 
fineness of the grass. Gerard hoped that the produce would 
be something like that of Switzerland, where, as is well 
known, this substance is an inexhaustible source of riches. 
The trees planted along the roadsides, drawing water sufficient 
from the ditches, made rapid progress. So it came to pass 
that in 1838, five years after Mme. Graslin came to Mont^gnac, 
the waste land, condemned as sterile by twenty genera¬ 
tions, was a green and fertile plain, the whole of it under 
cultivation. 

Gerard had built houses for five farms, besides the large 
one at the chateau; Gerard’s farm, like Grosset^te’s and 
Fresquin’s, received the overflow from Mme. Graslin’s estate ; 
they were conducted on the same methods, and laid out on 
the same lines. Gerard built a charming lodge on his own 
property. 

When all was finished, the township of Mont^gnac acted 
on the suggestion of its mayor, who was delighted to resign 
his office to Gerard, and the surveyor became mayor in his 
stead. 

In 1840 the departure of the first herd of fat cattle sent 
from Mont^gnac to the Paris markets was an occasion for a 
rural ffite. Cattle and horses were raised on the farms in the 
plain; for when the ground was cleared, seven inches of 
mold were usually found, which were manured by pasturing 


Madame graslin at montAgnac 


239 


cattle on them, and continually enriched by the leaves that 
fell every autumn from trees, and, first and foremost, by the 
melted snow-water from the reservoirs in the Gabon. 

It was in this year that Mme. Graslin decided that a tutor 
must be found for her son, now eleven years old. She was 
unwilling to part with him, and yet desired to make a well- 
educated man of her boy. M. Bonnet wrote to the seminary. 
Mme. Graslin, on her side, let fall a few words concerning 
her wishes and her difficulty to Monseigneur Dutheil, recently 
appointed to an archbisopric. It was a great and serious 
matter to make choice of a man who must spend at least nine 
months out of twelve at the chateau. Gerard had offered 
already to ground his friend Francis in mathematics, but it 
was impossible to do without a tutor; and this choice that 
she must make was the more formidable to Mme. Graslin 
because she knew that her health was giving way. As the 
value of the land.in her beloved Montegnac increased, she 
redoubled the secret austerities of her life. 

Monseigneur Dutheil, with whom Mme. Graslin still cor¬ 
responded, found her the man for whom she wished. He sent 
a schoolmaster named Ruffin from his own diocese. Ruffin 
was a young man of five-and-twenty with a genius for private 
teaching; he was widely read ; in spite of an excessive sensi¬ 
bility, could, when necessary, show himself sufficiently severe 
for the education of a child, nor was his piety in any way 
prejudicial to his knowledge; finally, he was patient and 
pleasant-looking. 

^^This is a real gift which I am sending you, my dear 
daughter,” so the archbishop wrote; “the young man is 
worthy to be the tutor of a prince, so I count upon you to 
secure his future, for he will be your son’s spiritual father.” 

M. Ruffin was so much liked by Mme. Graslin’s little circle 
of faithful friends that his coming made no change in the 


240 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


various intimacies of those who grouped about their idol, 
seized with a sort of jealousy on the hours and moments 
spent with her. 

The year 1843 saw the prosperity of Montegnac increasing 
beyond all hopes. The farm on the Gabou rivaled the farms 
on the plain, and the chateau led the way in all improvements. 
The five other farms, which by the terms of the lease paid an 
increasing rent, and would each bring in the sum of thirty 
thousand francs in twelve years’ time, then brought in sixty 
thousand francs a year all told. The farmers were just begin¬ 
ning to reap the benefits of their self-denial and Mme. Graslin’s 
sacrifices, and could afford to manure the meadows in the 
plain where the finest crops grew without fear of dry seasons. 
The Gabou farm paid its first rent of four thousand francs 
joyously. 

It was in this year that a man in Montegnac started a di 7 t- 
gence between the chief town in the arrondissement and Lim¬ 
oges ; a coach ran either way daily. M. Clousier’s nephew 
sold his clerkship and obtained permission to practice as a 
notary, and Fresquin was appointed to be tax-collector in the 
canton. Then the new notary built himself a pretty house in 
upper Montegnac, planted mulberry trees on his land, and 
became Gerard’s deputy. And Gerard himself, grown bold 
with success, thought of a plan which was to bring Mme. 
Graslin a colossal fortune ; for this year she paid off her loan, 
and began to receive interest from her investment in the funds. 
This was Gerard’s scheme : He would turn the little river 
into a canal by diverting the abundant water of the Gabou 
into it. This canal should effect a junction with the Vienne, 
and in this way it would be possible to exploit twenty thou¬ 
sand acres of the vast forest of Montegnac. The woods were 
admirably superintended by Colorat, but hitherto had brought 
in nothing on account of the difficulty of transport. With 
this arrangement it would be possible to fell a thousand acres 
every year (thus dividing the forest into twenty strips for sue- 


MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 


241 


cessive cuttings), and the valuable timber for building pur¬ 
poses could be sent by water to Limoges. This had been 
Graslin’s plan ; he had scarcely listened to the cure’s projects 
for the plain, he was far more interested in the scheme for 
making a canal of the little river. 


V. 


VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 

In the beginning of the following year, in spite of Mme. 
Graslin’s bearing, her friends saw warning signs that death 
was near. To all Roubaud’s observations, as to the utmost 
ingenuity of the most keen-sighted questioners, Veronique 
gave but one answer, “ She felt wonderfully well.” Yet that 
spring, when she revisited forest and farms and her rich 
meadows, it was with a childlike joy that plainly spoke of 
sad forebodings. 

Gerard had been obliged to make a low wall of concrete 
from the dam across the Gabon to the park at Montegnac 
along the base of the lower slope of the hill of the Correze; 
this had suggested an idea to him. He would enclose the 
whole forest of Montegnac, and throw the park into it. Mme. 
Graslin put by thirty thousand francs a year for this purpose. 
It would take seven years to complete the wall; but when it 
was finished, the splendid forest would be exempted from the 
dues claimed by the government over unenclosed woods and 
lands, and the three ponds in the Gabon valley would lie 
within the circuit of the park. Each of the ponds, proudly 
dubbed ‘^a lake,” had its island. This year, too, Gerard, 
in concert with GrossetSte, prepared a surprise for Mme. 
Graslin’s birthday; he had built on the second and largest 
island a little Chartreuse —a summer-house, satisfactorily rustic 
without and perfectly elegant within. The old banker was 
in the plot, so were Farrabesche, Fresquin, and Clousier’s 
nephew, and most of the well-to-do folk in Montegnac. Gros- 
setgte sent the pretty furniture. The bell tower, copied from 
the tower of Vevay, produced a charming effect in the land¬ 
scape. Six boats (two for each lake) had been secretly built, 
( 242 ) 


V^RONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 243 

rigged, and painted during the winter by Farrabesche and 
Guepin, with some help from the village carpenter at Mon- 
tegnac. 

So one morning in the middle of May, after Mme. Graslin’s 
friends had breakfasted with her, they led her out into the 
park, which Gerard had managed for the last five years as 
architect and naturalist. It had been admirably laid out, 
sloping down towards the pleasant meadows in the Gabou 
valley, where below, on the first lake, two boats were in readi¬ 
ness for them. The meadowland, watered by several clear 
streams, had been taken in at the base of the great amphi¬ 
theatre at the head of the Gabou valley. The woods round 
about them had been carefully thinned and disposed with a 
view to the effect; here the shapeliest masses of trees, there 
a charming inlet of meadow; there was an air of loneliness 
about the forest-surrounded place which soothed the soul. 

On a bit of rising ground by the lake Gerard had carefully 
reproduced the chalet which all travelers see and admire on 
the road to Brieg, through the Rhone valley. This was to be 
the chateau, dairy, and cow-shed. From the balcony there 
was a view over this landscape created by the engineer’s art, 
a view comparable, since the lakes had been made, to the 
loveliest Swiss scenery. 

It was a glorious day. Not a cloud in the blue sky, and on 
the earth beneath, the myriad gracious chance effects that the 
fair May month can give. Light wreaths of mist, risen from 
the lake, still hung like a thin smoke about the trees by the 
water’s edge—willows and weeping willows, ash and alder 
and abeles, Lombard and Canadian poplars, white and pink 
hawthorn, birch and acacia, had been grouped about the lake, 
as the nature of the ground and the trees themselves (all finely 
grown specimens now ten years old) suggested. The high 
green wall of forest trees was reflected in the sheet of water, 
clear as a mirror, and serene as the sky; their topmost crests, 
clearly outlined in that limpid atmosphere, stood out in con- 


244 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


trast with the thicket below them, veiled in delicate green 
undergrowth. The lakes, divided by strongly-built embank¬ 
ments with a causeway along them that served as a short cut 
from side to side of the valley, lay like three mirrors, each 
with a different reflecting surface, the water trickling from 
one to another in musical cascades. And beyond this, from 
the chalet you caught a glimpse of the bleak and barren com¬ 
mon lands, the pale chalky soil (seen from the balcony) 
looked like a wide sea, and supplied a contrast with the fresh 
greenery about the lake. Veronique saw the gladness in her 
friends’ faces as their hands were held out to assist her to 
enter the larger boat, tears rose to her eyes, and they rowed 
on in silence until they reached the first causeway. Here 
they landed, to embark again on the second lake; and V6ro- 
nique, looking up, saw the summer-house on the island, and 
Grosset^te and his family sitting on a bench before it. 

“They are determined to make me regret life, it seems,” 
she said, turning to the cure. 

“We want to keep you among us,” Clousier said. 

“There is no putting life into the dead,” she answered; 
but at M. Bonnet’s look of rebuke, she withdrew into herself 
again. 

“Simply let me have the charge of your health,” pleaded 
Roubaud in a gentle voice; “I am sure that I could preserve 
her who is the living glory of the canton, the common bond 
that unites the lives of all our friends.” 

Veronique bent her head, while Gerard rowed slowly out 
towards the island in the middle of the sheet of water, the 
largest of the three. The upper lake chanced to be too full; 
the distant murmur of the weir seemed to find a voice for the 
lovely landscape. 

“You did well indeed to bring me here to bid farewell to 
this entrancing view! ” she said, as she saw the beauty of the 
trees so full of leaves that they hid the bank on either 
side. 


V&RONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 245 

The only sign of disapprobation which Veronique’s friends 
permitted themselves was a gloomy silence ; and, at a second 
glance from M. Bonnet, she sprang lightly from the boat with 
an apparent gaiety, which she sustained. Once more she be¬ 
came the lady of the manor, and so charming was she that 
the Grossetete family thought that they saw in her the beauti¬ 
ful Mme. Graslin of old days. 

“Assuredly, you may live yet,” her mother said in Veron- 
ique’s ear. 

On that pleasant festival day, in the midst of a scene sub¬ 
limely transformed by the use of nature’s own resources, how 
should anything wound Veronique ? Yet then and there she 
received her death-blow. 

It had been arranged that the party should return home 
towards nine o’clock by way of the meadows \ for the roads, 
quite as fine as any in England or Italy, were the pride of 
their engineer. There were flints in abundance; as the 
stones were taken off the land they had been piled in heaps by 
the roadside; and with such plenty of road-material, it was so 
easy to keep the ways in good order that in five years’ time 
they were in a manner macadamized. Carriages werg waiting 
for the party at the lower end of the valley nearest the plain, 
almost under the Living Rock. The horses had all been 
bred in Montegnac. Their trial formed part of the pro¬ 
gramme for the day; for these were the first that were ready 
for sale, the manager of the stud having just sent ten of them 
up to the stables of the chateau. Four handsome animals in 
light and plain harness were to draw Mme. Graslin’s caleche, 
a present from Grossetdte. 

After dinner the joyous company went to take coffee on a 
promontory where a little wooden kiosk had been erected, a 
copy of one on the shores of the Bosphorus. From this 
point there was a wide outlook over the lowest lake, stretch¬ 
ing away to the great barrier across the Gabon, now covered 
thickly with a luxuriant growth of green, a charming spot for 

V 


246 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


the eyes to rest upon. Colorat’s house and the old cottage, 
now restored, were the only buildings in the landscape; 
Colorat’s capacities were scarcely adequate for the difficult 
post of head forester in Montegnac, so he had succeeded to 
Farrabcsche’s office. 

From this point Mine. Graslin fancied that she could see 
Francis near Farrabesche’s nursery of saplings; she looked 
for the child, and could not find him, till M. Ruffin pointed 
him out playing on the brink of the lake with M. Grossetdte’s 
great-grandchildren. Veronique felt afraid that some acci¬ 
dent might happen, and, without listening to remonstrances, 
sprang into one of the boats, landed on the causeway, and 
herself hurried away in search of her son. This little inci« 
dent broke up the party on the island. Grossetele, now a 
venerable great-grandfather, was the first to suggest a walk 
along the beautiful field-path that wound up and down by the 
side of the lower lakes. 

Mine. Graslin saw Francis a long way off. He was with a 
woman in mourning, who had thrown her arms about him. 
She seemed to be from a foreign country, judging by her dress 
and the shape of her hat. Veronique in dismay called her 
son to her. 

‘‘ Who is that woman?” she asked of the other children; 

and why did Francis go away from you? ” 

“The lady called him by his name,” said one of the little 
girls. Mme. Sauviat and Gerard, who were ahead of the 
others, came up at that moment. 

“ Who is that woman, dear? ” said Mme. Graslin, turning 
to Francis. 

“ I do not know,” he said, “ but no one kisses me like that 
except you and grandmamma. She was crying,” he added in 
his mother’s ear. 

“Shall I run and fetch her?” asked G6rard. 

“No!” said Mme. Graslin, with a curtness very unusual 
with her. 


vAronique laid in the tomb. 


247 


With kindly tact, which Veronique appreciated, Gerard 
took the little ones with him and went back to meet the 
others; so that Mine. Sauviat, Mme. Graslin, and Francis 
were left together. 

“What did she say to you?” asked Mme. Sauviat, ad¬ 
dressing her grandson. 

“ I don’t know. She did not speak French.” 

“Did you not understand anything she said?” asked 
Veronique. 

“ Oh, yes; one thing she said over and over again, that is 
how I can remember it —dear brother ! she said.” 

Veronique leaned on her mother’s arm and took her child’s 
hand, but she could scarcely walk, and her strength failed her. 

“What is it?- What has happened?”- everyone 

asked of Mme. Sauviat. 

A cry broke from the old Auvergnate : “ Oh ! my daughter 
is in danger!” she exclaimed, in her guttural accent and 
deep voice. 

Mme. Graslin had to be carried to her carriage. She or¬ 
dered Aline to keep beside Francis, and beckoned to Gerard. 

“ You have been in England, I believe,” she satd, when 
she had recovered herself; “do you understand English? 
What do these words mean —dear brother ? ” 

“That is very simple,” said Gerard, and he explained. 

Veronique exchanged glances with Aline and Mme. Sauviat; 
the two women shuddered, but controlled their feelings. 
Mme. Graslin sank into a torpor from which nothing roused 
her; she did not heed the gleeful voices as the carriages 
started, nor the splendor of the sunset light on the meadows, 
the even pace of the horses, nor the laughter of the friends 
who followed them on horseback at a gallop. Her mother 
bade the man drive faster, and her carriage was the first to 
reach the chateau. When the rest arrived they were told 
that Veronique had gone to her room, and would see no 


one. 




248 


THE COUNTRY PARSON, 


am afraid that Mine. Graslin must have received a fatal 
wound,” Gerard began, speaking to his friends. 

“ Where ?- How ? ” asked they. 

In the heart,” answered Gerard. 

Two days later Roubaud set out for Paris. He had seen 
that Mme. Graslin's life was in danger, and to save her he 
had gone to summon the first doctor in Paris to give his opin¬ 
ion of the case. But Veronique had only consented to see 
Roubaud to put an end to the importunities of Aline and her 
mother, who begged her to be more careful of herself; she 
knew that she was dying. She declined to see M. Bonnet, 
saying that the time had not yet come; and although all the 
friends who had come from Limoges for her birthday festival 
were anxious to stay with her, she entreated them to pardon 
her if she could not fulfill the duties of hospitality, but she 
needed the most profound solitude. So, after Roubaud’s sud¬ 
den departure, the guests left the chateau of Montegnac and 
went back to Limoges, not so much in disappointment as in 
despair, for all who had come with Grosset^te adored Veron¬ 
ique, and were utterly at a loss as to the cause of this mysteri¬ 
ous disaster. 

One evening, two days after Grosset^te’s large family party 
had left the chateau. Aline brought a visitor to Mme. Graslin’s 
room. It was Catherine Farrabesche. At first Catherine 
stood glued to the spot, so astonished was she at this sudden 
change in her mistress, the features so drawn. 

“ Good God ! madame, what harm that poor girl has done ! 
If only we could have known, Farrabesche and I, we would 
never have taken her in. She has just heard that madame is 
ill, and sent me to tell Mme. Sauviat that she should like to 
speak to her.” 

Here cried Veronique. ** Where is she at this mo¬ 
ment ? ” 

*‘My husband took her over to the chalet.” 

‘^Good,” said Mme. Graslin; ^Geave us, and tell Farra- 


vAronique laid in the tomb. 


249 


besche to go. Tell the lady to wait, and my mother will go 
to see her.” 

At nightfall Veronique, leaning on her mother’s arm, crept 
slowly across the park to the chalet. The moon shone with 
its most brilliant glory, the night air was soft; the two women, 
both shaken with emotion that they could not conceal, 
received in some sort the encouragement of nature. From 
moment to moment Mme. Sauviat stopped and made her 
daughter rest; for Veronique’s sufferings were so poignant that 
it was nearly midnight before they reached the path that 
turned down through the wood to the meadows, where the 
chalet roof sparkled like silver. The moonlight on the surface 
of the still water lent it a pearly hue. The faint noises of the 
night, which travel so far in the silence, made up a delicate 
harmony of sound. 

Veronique sat down on the bench outside the chalet in the 
midst of the glorious spectacle beneath the starry skies. The 
murmur of two voices and footfalls on the sands made by two 
persons still some distance away was borne to her by the 
water, which transmits every sound in the stillness as faith¬ 
fully as it reflects everything in its calm surface. There was 
an exquisite quality in the intonation of one of the voices, by 
which Veronique recognized the cur6, and with the rustle of 
his cassock was blended the light sound of a silk dress. 
Evidently there was a woman. 

“Let us go in,” she said to her mother. Mme. Sauviat 
and Veronique sat down on a manger in the low, large room 
built for a cow-shed. 

“I am not blaming you at all, my child,” the cur6 was 
saying; “but you may be the innocent cause of an irrepara¬ 
ble misfortune, for she is the life and soul of this wide coun¬ 
tryside.” 

“Oh, monsieur ! I will go to-night,” the stranger woman’s 
voice answered ; “ but—I can say this to you—it will be like 
death to me to leave my country a second time. If I had 


250 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


stayed a day longer in that horrible New York or in the United 
States, where there is neither hope nor faith nor charity, I 
should have died without any illness. The air I was breath¬ 
ing hurt my chest, the food did me no good, I was dying 
though I looked full of life and health. When I stepped on 
board the suffering ceased; I felt as if I were in France. 
Ah, monsieur! I have seen my mother and my brother’s wife 
die of grief. And then my grandfather and grandmother 
Tascheron died—died, dear M. Bonnet, in spite of the un¬ 
heard-of prosperity of Tascheronville- Yes. Our father 

began a settlement, a village in Ohio, and now the village is 
almost a town. One-third of the land thereabouts belongs to 
our family, for God has watched over us all along, and the farms 
have done well, our crops are magnificent, and we are rich— 
so rich that we managed to build a Catholic church. The 
whole town is Catholic; we will not allow any other worship, 
and we hope to convert all the endless sects about us by our 
example. The true faith is in a minority in that dreary, 
mercenary land of the dollar, a land which chills one to the 
soul. Still I would go back to die there sooner than to do 
the least harm here or give the slightest pain to the mother 
of our dear Francis. Only take me to the parsonage house 
to-night, dear M. Bonnet, so that I can pray awhile on his 
grave; it was just that that drew me here, for as I came nearer 
and nearer the place where he lies I felt quite a different being. 

No, I did not believe I should feel so happy here-” 

Very well,” said the cure ; ‘‘come, let us go. If at some 
future day you can come back without evil consequences, I 
will write to tell you, Denise; but perhaps after this visit to 
your old home you may feel able to live yonder without suffer- 

“ Leave this country now when it is so beautiful here! 
Just see what Mme. Graslin has made of the Gabon!” she 
added, pointing to the moonlit lake. “And then all this will 
belong to our dear Francis-” 






VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 


251 


“You shall not go, Denise,” said Mine. Graslin, appear¬ 
ing in the stable doorway. 

Jean-Frangois Tascheron’s sister clasped her hands at the 
sight of this ghost who spoke to her; for V^ronique’s white 
face in the moonlight looked unsubstantial as a shadow against 
the dark background of the open stable-door. Her eyes 
glittered like two stars. 

“No, child, you shall not leave the country you have 
traveled so far to see, and you shall be happy here, unless 
God should refuse to second my efforts ; for God, no doubt, 
has sent you here, Denise.” 

She took the astonished girl’s hand in hers, and went with 
her down the path towards the opposite shore of the lake. 
Mine. Sauviat and the cure, left alone, sat down on the bench. 

“Let her have her way,” murmured Mme. Sauviat. 

A few minutes later Veronique returned alone; her mother 
and the cure brought her back to the chateau. Doubtless she 
had thought of some plan of action which suited the mystery, 
for nobody saw Denise, no one knew that she had come 
back. 

Mme. Graslin took to her bed, nor did she leave it. 
Every day she grew worse. It seemed to vex her that she 
could not rise, for again and again she made vain efforts to 
get up and take a walk in the park. One morning in early 
June, some days after that night at the chalet, she made a 
violent effort and rose and tried to dress herself, as if for a 
festival. She begged Gerard to lend her his arm ; for her 
friends came daily for news of her, and when Aline said that 
her mistress meant to go out they all hurried up to the chateau. 
Mme. Graslin had summoned all her remaining strength to 
spend it on this last walk. She gained her object by a 
violent spasmodic effort of the will, inevitably followed by a 
deadly reaction. 

“Let us go to the chalet—and alone,” she said to G6*ard. 
The tones of her voice were soft, and there was something 


252 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


like coquetry in her glance. “This is my last escapade, for 
I dreamed last night that the doctors had come.” 

“ Would you like to see your woods ? ” asked Gerard. 

“For the last time. But,” she added, in coaxing tones, 
“ I have some strange proposals to make to you.” 

Gerard, by her direction, rowed her across the second 
lake, when she had reached it on foot. He was at a loss to 
understand such a journey, but she indicated the summer¬ 
house as their destination, and he plied his oars. 

There was a long pause. Her eyes wandered over the hill¬ 
sides, the water, and the sky; then she spoke. 

“ My friend, it is a strange request that I am about to make 
to you, but I think that you are the man to obey me.” 

“ In everything,” he said, “ sure as I am that you cannot 
will anything but good.” 

“I want you to marry,”>Bhe said; “you will fulfill the 
wishes of a dying woman, who is certain that she is securing 
your happiness.” 

“ I am too ugly! ” said Gerard. 

She is pretty, she is young, she wants to live in Mon- 
tegnac; and if you marry her, you will do something towards 
making my last moments easier. We need not discuss her 
qualities. I tell you this, that she is a woman of a thousand ; 
and as for her cliarms, youth, and beauty, the first sight will 
suffice, we shall see her in a moment in the summer-house. 
On our way back you shall give me your answer, a ‘ Yes ’ or 
a ‘ No,’ in sober earnest.” 

Mme. Graslin smiled as she saw the oars move more swiftly 
after this confidence. Denise, who was living out of sight in 
the island sanctuary, saw Mme. Graslin, and hurried to the 
door. Veronique and Gerard came in. In spite of herself, 
the poor girl flushed as she met the eyes that Gerard turned 
upon her; Denise’s beauty was an agreeable surprise to him. 

“ La Curieux does not let you want for anything, does 
she?” asked Veronique. 


VilRONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 253 

**Look, madame,” said Denise, pointing to the breakfast 
table. 

‘‘ This is M. Gdrard, of whom I have spoken to you,” 
V^ronique went on. “ He will be my son’s guardian, and 
when I am dead you will all live together at the chateau until 
Francis comes of age.” 

“ Oh, madame ! don’t talk like that.” 

“Just look at me, child ! ” said Veronique, and all at once 
she saw tears in the girl’s eyes. “She comes from New 
York,” she added, turning to Gerard. 

This by way of putting both on a footing of acquaintance. 
Gerard asked questions of Denise, and Mme. Graslin left 
them to chat, going to look out over the view of the last lake 
on the Gabou. At six o’clock Gerard and Veronique rowed 
back to the chalet. 

“ Well ? ” queried she, looking at her friend. 

“You have my word.” 

“ You maybe without prejudices,” Veronique began, “ but 
you ought to know how it was that she was obliged to 
leave the country, poor child, brought back by a home-sick 
longing.” 

“A slip?” 

“ Oh, no,” said Veronique, “or should I introduce her to 
you ? She is the sister of a workman who died on the 
scaffold-” 

“ Oh ! Tascheron, who murdered old Pingret-” 

“Yes. She is a murderer’s sister,” said Mme. Graslin, 
with inexpressible irony in her voice; “you can take back 
your word.” 

She went no further. Gerard was compelled to carry her 
to the bench at the chalet, and for some minutes she lay there 
unconscious. Gtord, kneeling beside her, said, as soon as 
she opened her eyes— 

“I will marry Denise.” 

Mme. Graslin made him rise, she took his head in her 


264 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


hands, and set a kiss on his forehead. Then, seeing that he 
was astonished to be thus thanked, she grasped his hand and 
said— 

You will soon know the meaning of this puzzle. Let us 
try to reach the terrace again, our friends are there. It is 
very late, and I feel very weak, and yet I should like to bid 
farewell from afar to this dear plain of mine.” 

The weather had been intolerably hot all day ; and though 
the storms, which did so much damage that year in different 
parts of Europe and in France itself, respected the Limousin, 
there had been thunder along the Loire, and the air began to 
grow fresher. The sky was so pure that the least details on 
the horizon were sharp and clear. What words can describe 
the delicious concert of sounds, the smothered hum of the 
township, now alive with workers returning from the fields? 
It would need the combined work of a great landscape 
painter and a painter of figures to do justice to such a picture. 
Is there not, in fact, a subtle connection between the lassitude 
of nature and the laborer’s weariness, an affinity of mood 
hardly to be rendered ? In the tepid twilight of the dog 
days, the rarefied air gives its full significance to the least 
sound made by every living thing. 

The women sit chatting at their doors with a bit of work 
even then in their hands, as they wait for the good man who, 
probably, will bring the children home. The smoke going 
up from the roofs is the sign of the last meal of the day and 
the gayest for the peasants; after it they will sleep. The stir 
at that hour is the expression of happy and tranquil thoughts 
in those who have finished their day’s work. There is a very 
distinct difference between their evening and morning snatches 
of song; for in this the village-folk are like the birds, the 
last twitterings at night are utterly unlike their notes at dawn. 
All nature joins in the hymn of rest at the end of the day, as 
in the hymn of gladness at sunrise; all things take the softly- 
blended hues that the sunset throws across the fields, tingeing 


VilRONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 


255 


the dusty roads with mellow light. If any should be bold 
enough to deny the influences of the fairest hour of the day, 
the very flowers would convict him of falsehood, intoxicating 
him with their subtlest scents, mingled with the tenderesl 
sounds of insects the amorous faint twitter of birds. 

Thin films of mist hovered above the ‘-'water-lanes” that 
furrowed the plain below the township. The poplars and 
acacias and sumach trees, planted in equal numbers along the 
roads, had grown so tall already that they shaded it, and in the 
wide fields on either side the large and celebrated herds of 
cattle were scattered about in groups, some still browsing, 
others chewing the cud. Men, women, and children were 
busy getting in the last of the hay, the most picturesque of 
all field-work. The evening air, less languid since the sudden 
breath of coolness after the storms, brought the wholesome 
scents of mown grass and swathes of hay. The least details 
in the beautiful landscape stood out perfectly sharp and clear. 

There was some fear for the weather. The ricks were being 
finished in all haste ; men hurried about them with loaded 
forks, raked the heaps together, and loaded the carts. Out in 
the distance the scythes were still busy, the women were turn¬ 
ing the long swathes that looked like hatched lines across the 
fields into dotted rows of haycocks. 

Sounds of laughter came up from the hay fields, the workers 
frolicked over their work, the children shouted as they buried 
each other in the heaps. Every figure was distinct, the 
women’s petticoats, pink, red, or blue, their kerchiefs, their 
bare arms and legs, the wide-brimmed straw hats of field- 
workers, the men’s shirts, the white trousers that nearly all 
of them wore. 

The last rays of sunlight fell like a bright dust over the long 
lines of poplar trees by the channels which divided up the 
plain into fields of various sizes, and lingered caressingly over 
the groups of men, women, and children, horses and carts and 
cattle. The shepherds and herdsmen began to gather their 


256 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


flocks together with the sound of their horns. The plain 
seemed so silent and so full of sound, a strange antithesis, but 
only strange to those who do not know the splendors of the 
fields. Loads of green fodder came into the township from 
every side. There was something indescribably somnolent in 
the influence of the scene, and Veronique, between the cure 
and Gerard, uttered no word. 

At last they came to a gap made by a rough track that led 
from the houses ranged below the terrace to the parsonage 
house and the church; and, looking down into Mont^gnac, 
Gerard and M. Bonnet saw the upturned faces of the women, 
men, and children, all looking at them. Doubtless it was 
Mme. Graslin more particularly whom they followed with 
their eyes. And what affection and gratitude there were in 
their way of doing this ! With what blessings did they not 
greet Veronique’s appearance ! With what devout intentness 
they watched the three benefactors of a whole countryside ! 
It was as if man added a hymn of gratitude to all the songs 
of evening. While Mme. Graslin walked with her eyes set 
on the magnificent distant expanse of green, her dearest crea¬ 
tion, the mayor and the cur6 watched the groups below. 
There was no mistake about their expression ; grief,, melan¬ 
choly, and regret, mingled with hope, were plainly visible in 
them all. There was not a soul in Montegnac but knew how 
that M. Roubaud had gone to Paris to fetch some great doctors, 
and that the beneficent lady of the canton was nearing the 
end of a fatal illness. On market-days, in every place for 
thirty miles round, the peasants asked the Montegnac folk. 

How is your mistress? ” And so the great thought of death 
hovered over this countryside, amid the fair picture of the 
hayfields. 

Far off in the plain, more than one mower sharpening his 
scythe, more than one girl leaning on her rake, or farmer 
among his stacks of hay, looked up and paused thoughtfully 
to watch Mme. Graslin, their great lady, the pride of the 


VilRONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 257 

Correze. They tried to discover some hopeful sign, or 
watched her admiringly, prompted by a feeling which puv 
work out of their minds. She is out of doors, so she must 
be better ! ” The simple phrase was on all lips. 

Mme. Graslin’s mother was sitting at the end of the terrace. 
Veronique had placed a cast-iron garden-seat in the corner, so 
that she might sit there and look down into the churchyard 
through the balustrade. Mme. Sauviat watched her daughter 
as she walked along the terrace, and her eyes filled with tears. 
She knew something of the preternatural effort which Veron¬ 
ique was making; she knew that even at that moment her 
daughter was suffering fearful pain, and that it was only a 
heroic effort of will that enabled her to stand. Tears, almost 
like tears of blood, found their way down among the sun¬ 
burned wrinkles of a face like parchment, that seemed as if it 
could not alter one crease for any emotion any more. Little 
Graslin, standing between M. Ruffin’s knees, cried for sym¬ 
pathy. 

“ What is the matter, child?” the tutor asked sharply. 

Grandmamma is crying-” 

M. Ruffin’s eyes had been fixed on Mme. Graslin,^who was 
coming towards them; he looked at Mme. Sauviat; the 
Roman matron’s face, stony with sorrow and wet with tears, 
gave him a great shock. That dumb grief had invested the 
old woman with a certain grandeur and sacredness. 

Madame, why did you let her go out? ” asked the tutor. 

Veronique was coming nearer. She walked like a queen, 
with admirable grace in her whole bearing. And Mme. 
Sauviat knew that she should outlive her daughter, and in the 
cry of despair that broke from her a secret escaped that re¬ 
vealed many things which roused curiosity. 

“ To think of it! She walks and wears a horrible hair shirt 
always pricking her skin ! ” 

The young man’s blood ran cold at her words; he could 
not be insensible to the exquisite grace of Veronique’s move- 
17 



258 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


ments, and shuddered as he thought of the cruel, unrelenting 
mastery that the soul must have gained over the body. A 
Parisienne famed for her graceful figure, the ease of her car¬ 
riage and bearing, might perhaps have feared comparison with 
Veronique at that moment. 

She has worn it for thirteen years, ever since the child 
was weaned,” the old woman said, pointing to young Graslin. 

She has worked miracles here ; and if they but knew her life, 
they might put her among the saints. Nobody has seen her 
eat since she came here, do you know why ? Aline brings her 
a bit of dry bread three times a day on a great platter full of 
ashes, and vegetables cooked in water without any salt, on a 
red earthenware dish that they put a dog’s food in ! Yes. 
That is the way she lives who has given life to the canton. 
She says her prayers kneeling on the hem of her cilice. She 
says that if she did not practice these austerities she could not 
wear the smiling face you see. I am telling you this ” (and 
the old woman’s voice dropped lower) “ for you to tell it to the 
doctor that M. Roubaud has gone to fetch from Paris. If he 
will prevent my daughter from continuing these penances, 
they might save her yet (who knows?), though the hand of 
death is on her head. Look ! Ah, I must be very strong to 
have borne all these things for fifteen years.” 

The old woman took her grandson’s hand, raised it, and 
passed it over her forehead and cheeks as if some restorative 
balm communicated itself in the touch of the little hand ; then 
she set a kiss upon it, a kiss full of the love which is the secret of 
grandmothers no less than mothers. By this time Veronique 
was only a few paces distant, Clousier was with her, and the 
cure and Gerard. Her face, lit up by the setting sun, was 
radiant with awful beauty. 

One thought, steadfast amid many inward troubles, seemed 
to be written in the lines that furrowed the sallow forehead 
in long folds piled one above the other, like clouds. The 
outlines of her face, now completely colorless, entirely white 


VilRONlQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 251 

with the dead olive-tinged whiteness of plants grown without 
sunlight, were thin but not withered, and showed traces of 
great physical suffering produced by mental anguish. She 
had quelled the body through the soul, and the soul through 
the body. So completely worn out was she that she resem¬ 
bled her past self only as an old woman resembles her portrait 
painted in girlhood. The glowing expression of her eyes 
spoke of the absolute domination of a Christian will over a 
body reduced to the subjection required by religion, for in 
this woman the flesh was at the mercy of the spirit. As in 
profane poetry Achilles dragged the dead body of Hector, 
victoriously she dragged it over the stormy v/ays of life; and 
thus for fifteen years she had compassed the heavenly Jerusa¬ 
lem which she had hoped to enter, not as a thief, but amid 
triumphant acclamations. Never was anchorite amid the 
parched and arid deserts of Africa more master of his senses 
than Veronique in her splendid chateau in a rich land of soft 
and luxurious landscape, nestling under the mantle of the 
great forest where science, heir to Moses’ rod, had caused 
plenty to spring forth and the prosperity and the welfare of a 
whole countryside. Veronique was looking out^over the 
results of twelve years of patience, on the accomplishment of 
a task on which a man of ability might have prided himself; 
but with the gentle modesty which Pontorno’s brush had 
depicted in the expression of his symbolical “ Christian 
Chastity ”—with her arms about the unicorn. Her two com¬ 
panions respected her silent mood when they saw that she was 
gazing over the vast plain, once sterile, and now fertile; the 
devout lady of the manor went with folded arms and eyes 
fixed on the point where the road reached the horizon. 

Suddenly she stopped when but two paces away from Mme. 
Sauviat, who watched her as Christ’s mother must have gazed 
at her Son upon the cross. Veronique raised her hand and 
pointed to the spot where the road turned off to Mon- 
t^gnac. 


260 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


“Do you see that caleche and the four post-horses?’* she 
asked, smiling. “ That is M. Roubaud. He is coming 
back. We shall soon know now how many hours I have 
to live.” 

Hours I echoed Gerard. 

“ Did I not tell you that this was my last walk? ” she said. 
“ Did I not come to see this beautiful view in all its glory for 
the last time ? ” 

She indicated the fair meadow land, lit up by the last 
rays of the sun, and the township below. All the village 
had come out and stood in the square in front of the 
church. 

“Ah!” she went on, “let me think that there is God’s 
benediction in the strange atmospheric conditions that have 
favored our hay-harvest. Storms all about us, rain and 
hail and thunder have laid waste pitilessly and incessantly, 
but not here. The people think so; why should not I 
follow their example? I need so much to find some good 
augury on earth for that which awaits me when my eyes 
shall be closed!” 

Her child came to her, took his mother’s hand, and laid it 
on his hair. The great eloquence of that movement touched 
V^ronique; with preternatural strength she caught him up, 
held him on lier left arm a moment as she used to hold him 
as a child at the breast, and kissed him. “Do you see this 
land, my boy?” she said. “You must go on with your 
mother’s work when you are a man.” 

Then the cure spoke sadly: “There are a very few strong 
and privileged natures who are permitted to see death face to 
face, to fight a long duel with him, and to show courage and 
skill that strike others with admiration ; this is the dreadful 
spectacle that you give us, madame; but, perhaps, you are 
somewhat wanting in pity for us. Leave us at least the hope 
that you are mistaken, that God will permit you to finish all 
that you have begun.” 


VjkRONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 


261 


“I have done nothing save through you, my friend,” said 
she. “ It was in my power to be useful to you; it is so no 
longer. Everything about us is green; there is no desolate 
waste here now, save my own heart. You know it, dear cur6, 
you know that I can only find peace and pardon there -” 

She held out her hand over the churchyard. She had never 
said so much since the day when she first came to Montegnac 
and fainted away on that very spot. The cur6 gazed at his 
penitent; and, accustomed as he had been for long to read 
her thoughts, he knew from those simple words that he had 
won a fresh victory. It must have cost Veronique a terrible 
effort over herself to break a twelve years’ silence with such 
pregnant words; and the cure clasped his hands with the 
devout fervor familiar to him, and looked with deep religious 
emotion on the family group about him. All their secrets 
had passed through his heart. 

Gerard looked bewildered; the words peace and pardon ” 
seemed to sound strangely in his ears; M. Ruffin’s eyes were 
fixed in a sort of dull amazement on Mme. Graslin. And 
meanwhile the caldche sped rapidly along the road, threading 
its way from tree to tree. ^ 

“There are five of them ! ” said the cur6, who could see 
and count the travelers. 

“ Five ! ” exclaimed M. Gerard. “ Will five of them know 
more than two? ” 

“Ah ! ” murmured Mme. Graslin, who leaned on the curb’s 
arm, “ there is the public prosecutor. “ What does he come 
to do here ? ” 

“ And papa Grosset§te too ! ” cried Francis. 

“Madame, take courage, be worthy of yourself,” said the 
cure. He drew Mme. Graslin, who was leaning heavily on 
him, a few paces aside. 

“What does he want?” she said for all answer, and she 
went to lean against the balustrade. “Mother!” she ex¬ 
claimed, despairingly. 



262 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Mine. Sauviat sprang forward with an activity that belied 
her years. 

“ I shall see him again-” said Veronique. 

“If he is coming with M. GrossetSte,” said the cur6, “it 
can only be with good intentions, of course.” 

“Ah ! sir, my daughter is dying ! ” cried Mme. Sauviat, 
seeing the change that passed over Mme. Graslin’s face at the 
words. “How will she endure such cruel agitations? M. 
GrossetSte has always prevented that man from coming to see 
Veronique-” 

Veronique’s face flamed. 

“So you hate him, do you?” the Abb6 Bonnet asked, 
turning to his penitent. 

“ She left Limoges lest all Limoges should know her secrets,” 
said Mme. Sauviat, terrified by that sudden change wrought 
in Mme. Graslin’s drawn features. 

“Do you not see that his presence will poison the hours 
that remain to me, when heaven alone should be in my 
thoughts? He is nailing me down to earth ! ” cried V6ron- 
ique. 

The cure took Mme. Graslin’s arm once more, and con¬ 
strained her to walk a few paces; when they were alone, he 
looked full at her with one of those angelic looks which calm 
the most violent tumult in the soul. 

“If it is thus,” he said, “I, as your confessor, bid you to 
receive him, to be kind and gracious to him, to lay aside this 
garment of anger, and to forgive him as God will forgive you. 
Can there be a taint of passion in the soul that I deemed 
purified? Burn this last grain of incense on the altar of 
penitence, lest all shall be one lie in you.” 

“ There was still this last struggle to make, and it is made,” 
slie said, drying her eyes. “ The evil one was lurking in the 
last recess in my heart, and doubtless it was God who put into 
M. de Granville’s heart the thought that sends him here. How 
many times will He smite me yet? ” she cried. 




Vi:RONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 263 

She stopped as if to put up an inward prayer; then she 
turned to Mine. Sauviat, and said in a low voice : 

Mother dear, be nice and kind to M. le Procureur 
general.” 

In spite of herself, the old Auvergnate shuddered feverishly. 

“There is no hope left,” she said, as she caught at the 
cure’s hand. 

As she spoke, the cracking of the postillion’s whip announced 
that the caliche was climbing the avenue; the great gateway 
stood open, the carriage turned in the courtyard, and in 
another moment the travelers came out upon the terrace. 
Beside the public prosecutor and M. Grosset8te, the arch¬ 
bishop had come (M. Dutheil was in Limoges for Gabriel de 
Rastignac’s consecration as bishop), and M. Roubaud came 
arm in arm with Horace Bianchon, one of the greatest 
doctors in Paris. 

“ You are welcome,” said Veronique, addressing her guests, 
“ and you"' (holding out a hand to the public prosecutor and 
grasping his) “especially welcome.” 

M. Grossetgte, the archbishop, and Mme. Sauviat ex¬ 
changed glances at this; so great ^as their astonishment 
that it overcame the profound discretion of old age. 

“And I thank him who brought you here,” V(§ronique 
went on, as she looked on the Comte de Granville’s face for 
the first time in fifteen years. “I have borne you a grudge 
for a long time, but now I know that I have done you an 
injustice ; you shall know the reason of all this if you will 
stay here in Mont6gnac for two days.” She turned to Horace 
Bianchon—“ This gentleman will confirm my apprehensions, 
no doubt.” Then to the archbishop—“It is God .surely 
who sends you to me, my lord,” she said with a bow. “ For 
our old friendship’s sake you will not refuse to be with me in 
my last moments. By what grace, I wonder, have I all tliose 
who have loved me and sustained me all my life about me 
now? ” 


264 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


At the word love ” she turned with graceful, deliberate 
intent towards M. de Granville j the kindness in her manner 
brought tears into his eyes. There was a deep silence. The 
two doctors asked themselves what witchcraft it was that 
enabled the woman before them to stand upright while endur¬ 
ing the agony which she must suffer. The other three were so 
shocked at the change that illness had wrought in her that 
they could only communicate their thoughts by the eyes. 

“Permit me to go with these gentlemen,” she said, with 
her unvarying grace of manner; “it is an urgent question.” 
She took leave of her guests, and, leaning upon the two 
doctors, went towards the chateau so slowly and painfully that 
it was evident that the end was at hand. 

The archbishop looked at the cure. 

“ M. Bonnet,” he said, “ you have worked wonders ! ” 

“Not I, but God, my lord,” answered the other. 

“They said that she was dying,” exclaimed M. GrossetSte ; 
“why, she is dead ! There is nothing left but a spirit-” 

“A soul,” said M. Gerard. 

“ She is the same as ever,” cried the public prosecutor. 

“She is a Stoic after the manner of the old Greek Zeno,” 
said the tutor. 

Silently they went along the terrace and looked out over 
the landscape that glowed a most glorious red color in the 
light shed abroad by the fires of the sunset. 

“It is thirteen years since I saw this before,” said the arch' 
bishop, indicating the fertile fields, the valley, and the hill 
above Montegnac, “so for me this miracle is as extraordi¬ 
nary as another which I have just witnessed ; for how can you 
let Mme. Graslin stand upright? She ought to be lying in 
bed-” 

“So she was,” said Mme. Sauviat. “She never left her 
bed for ten days, but she was determined to get up to see 
this place for the last time.” 

“I understand,” said M. de Granville. “She wished to 



V^ROAIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB, 


265 


say farewell to all that she had called into being, but she ran 
the risk of dying here on the terrace.” 

M. Roubaud said that she was not to be thwarted,” said 
Mme. Sauviat. 

“What a marvelous thing!” exclaimed the archbishop, 
whose eyes never wearied of wandering over the view. “ She 
has made the waste into sown fields. But we know, mon¬ 
sieur,” he added, turning to Gerard, “that your skill and 
your labors have been a great factor in this.” 

“We have only been her laborers,” the mayor said. “ Yes; 
we are only the hands, she was the head.” 

Mme. Sauviat left the group, and went to hear what the 
opinion of the doctor from Paris was. 

“ We shall stand in need of heroism to be present at this 
death-bed,” said the public prosecutor, addressing the arch¬ 
bishop and the cur6. 

“Yes,” said M. Grossetdte; “but for such a friend, great 
things should be done.” 

While they waited and came and went, oppressed by heavy 
thoughts, two of Mme. Graslin’s tenants came up. They had 
come, they said, on behalf of a whole township waiting in 
painful suspense to hear the verdict of the doctor from Paris. 

“ They are in consultation, we know nothing as yet, my 
friends,” said the archbishop. 

M. Roubaud came hurrying towards them, and at the sound 
of his quick footsteps the others hastened to meet him. 

“ Well ? ” asked the mayor. 

“She has not forty-eight hours to live,” answered M. Rou¬ 
baud. “ The disease has developed while I was away. M. 
Bianchon cannot understand how she could walk. These sel¬ 
dom seen phenomena are always the result of great exaltation 
of mind. And so, gentlemen,” he added, speaking to the 
churchmen, “ she has passed out of our hands and into yours; 
science is powerless; my illustrious colleague thinks that there 
is scarcely time for the ceremonies of the church.” 


266 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


** Let us put up the prayers appointed for times of great 
calamity,” said the cure, and he went away with his parish¬ 
ioners. His lordship will no doubt condescend to admin¬ 
ister the last sacraments.” 

The archbisliop bowed his head in reply; he could not say 
a word, his eyes were full of tears. The group sat -down or 
leaned against the balustrade, and each was deep in his own 
thoughts. The church bells peeled mournfully, the sound of 
many footsteps came up from below, the whole village was 
flocking to the service. The light of the altar candles gleamed 
through the trees in M. Bonnet’s garden, and then began the 
sounds of chanting. A faintly flushed twilight overspread the 
fields, the birds had ceased to sing, and the only sound in 
the plain was the shrill, melancholy, long-drawn note of the 
frogs. 

Let us do our duty,” said the archbishop at last, and he 
went slowly towards the house, like a man who carries a burden 
greater than he can bear. 

The consultation had taken place in the great drawing¬ 
room, a vast apartment which communicated with a state 
bedroom, draped with crimson damask. Here Graslin had 
exhibited to the full the self-made man’s taste for display. 
Veronique had not entered the room half-a-dozen times in 
fourteen years; the great suite of apartments was completely 
useless to her; she had never received visitors in them, but 
the effort she had made to discharge her last obligations and 
to quell her revolted physical nature had left her powerless to 
reach her own rooms. 

The great doctor had taken his patient’s hand and felt her 
pulse, then he looked significantly at M. Roubaud, and the 
two men carried her into the adjoining room and laid her on 
the bed. Aline hastily flinging open the doors for them. There 
were, of course, no sheets on the state bed; the two doctors 
laid Mme. Graslin at full length on the crimson quilt, Roubaud 
opened the windows, flung back the Venetian shutters, and 


VilRONlQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 


267 


summoned help. La Sauviat and the servants came hurrying 
to the room; they lighted the wax-candles (yellow with age) 
in the sconces. 

Then the dying woman smiled. ^‘It is decreed that my 
death shall be a festival, as a Christian’s death should be.” 

During the consultation she spoke again— 

The public prosecutor has done his work: I was going; 
he has despatched me sooner-” 

The old mother laid a finger on her lips with a warning 
glance. 

“Mother, I will speak now,” Veronique said in answer. 
“ Look ! the finger of God is in all this; I shall die very soon 
in this room hung with red-” 

La Sauviat went out in dismay at the words. 

“Aline ! ” she cried, “she is speaking out!-” 

“Ah! madame’s mind is wandering,” said the faithful 
waiting-woman, coming in with the sheets. “ Send for M. ie 
Cur6, madame.” 

“ You must undress your mistress,” said Bianchon, as soon 
as Aline entered the room. 

“ It will be very difficult; madam^s wears a hair shirt next 
her skin.” 

“What?” the great doctor cried, “are such horrors still 
practiced in this nineteenth century ? ” 

“ Mme. Graslin has never allowed me to touch the 
stomach,” said M. Roubaud. “ I could learn nothing of her 
complaint save from her face and her pulse, and from what I 
could learn from her mother and her maid.” 

Veronique was laid on a sofa while they made the great bed 
ready for her at the farther end of the room. The doctors 
spoke together with lowered voices as La Sauviat and Aline 
made the bed. There was a look terrible to see in the two 
women’s faces; the same thought was wringing both their 
hearts. “ We are making her bed for the last time—this will 
be her bed of death.” 




268 


THE COUNTRY FAR SON. 


The consultation was brief. In the first place, Bianchon 
insisted that Aline and La Sauviat must cut the patient out of 
the cilice and put her in a nightdress. The two doctors 
waited in the great drawing-room while this was done. Aline 
came out with the terrible instrument of penance wrapped 
in a towel. “ Madame is just one wound,” she told them. 

“Madame, you have a stronger will than Napoleon had,” 
said Bianchon, when the two doctors had come in again, and 
Veronique had given clear answers to the questions put to her. 
“You are preserving your faculties in the last stage of a dis¬ 
ease in which the Emperor’s brilliant intellect sank. From 
what I know of you, I feel that I owe it to you to tell you 
the truth.” 

“ I implore you, with clasped hands, to tell it me,” she said ; 
“ you can measure the strength that remains to me, and I 
have need of all the life that is in me for a few hours yet.” 

“You must think of nothing but your salvation,” said 
Bianchon. 

“If God grants that body and mind die together,” she 
said, with a divinely sweet smile, “believe that the favor is 
vouchsafed for the glory of His Church on earth. My mind 
is still needed to carry out a thought from God, while Napoleon 
had accomplished his destiny.” 

The two doctors looked at each other in amazement; the 
words were spoken as easily as if Mine. Graslin had been in 
her drawing-room. 

“ Ah ! here is the doctor who will heal me,” she added, as 
the archbishop entered. 

She summoned all her strength to sit upright to take leave 
of M. Bianchon, speaking graciously, and asking him to 
accept something beside money for the good news which he 
had just brought her; then she whispered a few words to her 
mother, who went out with the doctor. She asked the arch¬ 
bishop to wait until the cure should come, and seemed to wish 
to rest for a little while. Aline sat by her mistress’ bedside. 


Vi:RONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 


269 


At midnight Mme. Graslin woke and asked for the arch¬ 
bishop and the cure. Aline told her that they were in the 
room engaged in prayer for her. With a sign she dismissed 
her mother and the maid, and beckoned the two priests to 
her bed. 

“ Nothing of what I shall say is unknown to you, my lord, 
nor to you, M. le Cure. You, my lord archbishop, were the 
first to look into my conscience; at a glance you read almost 
the whole past, and that which you saw was enough for you. 
My confessor, an angel sent by heaven to be near me, knows 
something more; I have confessed all to him, as in duty 
bound. And now I wish to consult you—whose minds are 
enlightened by the spirit of the church; I want to ask you 
how such a woman as I should take leave of this life as a true 
Christian. You, spirits holy and austere, do you think that 
if heaven vouchsafes pardon to the most complete and pro¬ 
found repentance ever made by a guilty soul, I shall have 
accomplished my whole task here on earth ? ” 

Yes; yes, my daughter,” said the archbishop. 

‘‘No, my father, no!” she cried, sitting upright, and 
lightnings flashed from her eyes. “Yonder lies an unhappy 
man in his grave, not many steps away, under the sole weight 
of a hideous crime; here, in this sumptuous house, there is a 
woman crowned with the aureola of good deeds and a virtu¬ 
ous life. They bless the woman ; they curse him, poor boy. 
On the criminal they heap execrations, I enjoy the good 
opinion of all; yet most of the blame of his crime is mine, 
and a great part of the good for which they praise me so and 
are grateful to me is his; cheat that lam! I have the credit 
of it, and he, a martyr to his loyalty to me, is covered with 
shame. In a few hours I shall die, and a whole canton will 
weep for me, a whole department will praise my good deeds, 
my piety, and my virtues; and he died reviled and scorned, 
a whole town crowding about to see him die, for hate of the 
murderer ! You, my judges, are indulgent to me, but I hear 


270 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


an imperious voice within me that will not let me rest. Ah ! 
God’s hand, more heavy than yours, has been laid upon me 
day by day, as if to warn me that all was not expiated yet. 
My sin shall be redeemed by public confession. Oh ! he was 
happy, that criminal who went to a shameful death in the face 
of earth and heaven ! But as for me, I cheated justice, and 
I am still a cheat ! All the respect shown to me has been like 
mockery, not a word of praise but has scorched my heart 
like fire. And now the public prosecutor has come here. Do 
you not see that the will of heaven is in accordance with this 
voice that cries ^ Confess ? ’ ” 

Both priests, the prince of the church and the simple 
country parson, the two great luminaries, remained silent, and 
kept their eyes fixed on the ground. So deeply moved 
were the judges by the greatness and the submission of the 
sinner that they could not pass sentence. After a pause, the 
archbishop raised his noble face, thin and worn with the daily 
practice of austerity in a devout life. 

My child,” he said, “ you are going beyond the command¬ 
ments of the church. It is the glory of the church that she 
adapts her dogmas to the conditions of life in every age; for 
the church is destined to make the pilgrimage of the centuries 
side by side with humanity. According to the decision of 
the church, private confession has replaced public confession. 
This substitution has made the new rule of life. The suffer¬ 
ings which you have endured suffice. Depart in peace. God 
has heard you indeed.” 

But is not this wish of a criminal in accordance with the 
rule of the early church, which filled heaven with as many 
saints and martyrs and confessors as there are stars in heaven?” 
Veronique cried earnestly. ‘‘Who was it that wrote ‘Con¬ 
fess your faults one to another?’ Was it not one of our 
Saviour’s own immediate disciples? Let me confess my 
shame publicly upon my knees. That will be an expiation 
of the wrong that I have done to the world, and to a family 


VJ^RONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 


271 


exiled and almost extinct through my sin. The world should 
know that my good deeds are not an offering to God; that 

they are only the just payment of a debt- Suppose that, 

when I am gone, some finger should raise the veil of lies that 

covers me ?- Oh, the thought of it brings the supreme hour 

nearer.” 

‘‘I see calculation in this, my child,” the archbishop said 
gravely. “There are still strong passions left in you; that 
which I deemed extinguished is-” 

“ My lord,” she cried, breaking in upon the speaker, turn¬ 
ing her fixed horror-stricken eyes on him, “ I swear to you that 
my heart is purified so far as it may be in a guilty and repent¬ 
ant woman ; there is no thought left in me now but the thought 
of God.” 

“ Let us leave heaven’s justice take its course, my lord,” 
the cur6 said, in a softened voice. “ I have opposed this idea 
for four years. It has caused the only differences of opinion 
which have risen between my penitent and me. I have seen 
the very depths of this soul; earth has no hold left there. 
When the tears, sighs, and contrition of fifteen years have 
buried a sin in which two beings shared, do not think that 
there is the least luxurious taint in the long and dreadful 
remorse. For a long while memory has ceased to mingle 
its flames in the most ardent repentance. Yes, many tears 
have quenched so great a fire. I will answer,” he said, 
stretching his hand out above Mine. Graslin’s head and raising 
his tear-filled eyes, “ I will answer for the purity of this arch¬ 
angel’s soul. I used once to see in this desire a thought of 
reparation to an absent family; it seems as if God Himself 
has sent one member of it here, through one of those acci¬ 
dents in which His guidance is unmistakably revealed.” 

Veronique took the cure’s trembling hand and kissed it. 

“You have often been harsh to me, dear pastor,” she said; 
“and now, in this moment, I discover where your apostolic 
sweetness lay hidden. You,” she said, turning to the arch- 





272 


THE COUNTRY TARS ON. 


bishop, you, the supreme head of this corner of God’s earthly 
kingdom, be my stay in this time of humiliation. I shall 
prostrate myself as the lowest of women; you will raise me, a 
forgiven soul, equal, it may be, with those who have never 
gone astray.” 

The archbishop was silent for a while, engaged, no 
doubt, in weighing the considerations visible to his eagle’s 
glance. 

My lord,” said the cure, “deadly blows have been aimed 
at religion. Will not this return to ancient customs, made 
necessary by the greatness both of the sin and the repentance, 
be a triumph which will redound to us? ” 

“ They will say that we are fanatics ! that we have insisted 
on this cruel scene! ” and the archbishop fell once more to 
his meditations. 

Just at that moment Horace Bianchon and Roubaud came 
in without knocking at the door. As it opened, Veronique 
saw her mother, her son, and all the servants kneeling in 
prayer. The cures of the two neighboring parishes had come 
to assist M. Bonnet; perhaps also to pay their respects to the 
great archbishop, in whom the church of France saw a car¬ 
dinal-designate, hoping that some day the Sacred College 
might be enlightened by the advent of an intellect so thor¬ 
oughly Gallican. 

Horace Bianchon was about to start for Paris ; he came to 
bid farewell to the dying lady, and to thank her for her mu¬ 
nificence. He approached the bed slowly, guessing from the 
manner of the two priests that the inward wound which had 
caused the disease of the body was now under consideration. 
He took Veronique’s hand, laid it on the bed, and felt her 
pulse. The deepest silence, the silence of the fields in a 
summer-night, added solemnity to the scene. Lights shone 
from the great drawing-room, beyond the folding doors, and 
fell upon the little company of kneeling figures, the cur^s only 
were seated, reading their breviaries. About the crimson bed 


VilRONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 


273 


of state stood the archbishop, in his violet robes, the cur6, 
and the two men of science. 

“She is troubled even in death ! “ said Horace Bianchon. 
Like many men of great genius, he not seldom found grand 
words worthy of the scenes at which he was present. 

The archbishop rose, as if goaded by some inward impulse. 
He called M. Bonnet, and went towards the door. They 
crossed the chamber and the drawing-room, and went out upon 
the terrace, where they walked up and down for a few min¬ 
utes. As they came in after a consideration of this point of 
ecclesiastical discipline, Roubaud went to meet them. 

“ M. Bianchon sent me to tell you to be quick; Mine. Gras- 
lin is dying in strange agitation, which is not caused by the 
severe physical pain which she is suffering.” 

The archbishop hurried back, and in reply to Mme. Gras- 
lin’s anxious eyes, he said, “ You shall be satisfied.” 

Bianchon (still with his finger on the dying woman’s wrist) 
made an involuntary start of surprise; he gave Roubaud a 
quick look, and then glanced at the priests. 

“ My lord, this body is no longer pur province,” he said, 
“your words brought life in the place of death. You make 
a miracle credible.” 

“Madame has been nothing but soul this long time 
past,” said Roubaud, and Veronique thanked him by a 
glance. 

A smile crossed her face as she lay there, and, with the 
smile that expressed the gladness of a completed expiation, 
the innocent look of the girl of eighteen returned to her. 
The appalling lines traced by inward tumult, the dark color¬ 
ing, the livid patches, all the details that but lately had con¬ 
tributed a certain dreadful beauty to her face, all alterations 
of all kinds, in short, had vanished ; to those who watched 
Veronique, it seemed as if she had been wearing a mask and 
had suddenly dropped it. The wonderful transfiguration by 
which the inward life and nature of this woman were made 
18 


274 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


visible in her features was wrought for the last time. Her 
whole being was purified and illuminated, her face miglit have 
caught a gleam from the flaming swords of the guardian angels 
about her. She looked once more as she used to look in 
Limoges when they called her “ the little Virgin.” The love 
of God manifestly was yet stronger in her than the guilty love 
had been; the earthly love had brought out all the forces of 
life in her; the love of God dispelled every trace of the in¬ 
roads of death. A smothered cry was heard. La Sauviat 
appeared ; she sprang to the bed. ^‘So I see my child again 
at last! ” she exclaimed. 

Something in the old woman’s accent as she uttered tlie two 
words, ‘‘my child,” conjured up such visions of early child¬ 
hood and its innocence, that those who watched by this heroic 
death-bed turned their heads away to hide their emotion. 
The great doctor took Mine. Graslin’s hand, kissed it, and 
then went his way, and soon the sound of his departing car¬ 
riage sent echoes over the countryside, spreading the tidings 
that he had no hope of saving the life of her who was the life 
of the country. The archbishop, cure, and doctor, and all 
who felt tired, went to take a little rest. Mine. Graslin her¬ 
self slept for some hours. When she awoke the dawn was 
breaking; she asked them to open the windows, she would 
see her last sunrise. 

At ten o’clock in the morning the archbislioj), in pontifical 
vestments, came back to Mine. Graslin’s room. Both he and 
M. Bonnet reposed such confidence in her that they made no 
recommendations as to the limits to be observed in her confes¬ 
sion. Veronique saw other faces of other clergy, for some of 
the cures from neighboring parishes had come. The splendid 
ornaments which Mme. Graslin had presented to her beloved 
parish church lent splendor to the ceremony. Eight children, 
choristers in their red-and-white surplices, stood in a double 
row between the bed and the door of the great drawing-room, 
each of them holding one of the great candlesticks of gilded 


vAronique laid in the tomb. 


275 


bronze which Veroniquc had ordered from Paris. A white- 
haired sacristan on either side of the dais lield the banner of 
the church and the crucifix. The servants, in their devotion, 
had removed the wooden altar from the sacristy and erected 
it near the drawing-room door; it was decked and ready for 
the archbishop to say mass. Mme. Graslin was touched by 
an attention which the church pays only to crowned heads. 
The great folding-doors that gave access to the dining-room 
stood wide open, so that she could see the hall of the chateau 
filled with people; nearly all the village was there. 

Her friends had seen to everything, none but the people 
of the house stood in the drawing-room; and before them, 
grouj>ed about the door of her room, she' saw her intimate 
friends and those whose discretion might be trusted. M. 
Grosset^te, M. de Granville, Roubaud, Gerard, Clousier, and 
Ruffin stood foremost among these. All of them meant to 
stand upright when the time came, so that the dying woman’s 
confession should not travel beyond them. Other things 
favored this design, for the sobs of those about her drowned 
her voice. 

r 

Two of these stood out dreadfully conspicuous among the 
rest. The first was Denise Tascheron. In her foreign dress, 
made with Quakerly simplicity, she was unrecognizable to any 
of the villagers who might have caught a glimpse of her. Not 
so for the public prosecutor; she was a figure that he was not 
likely to forget, and with her reappearance a dreadful light 
began to dawn on him. Now he had a glimpse of the truth, 
a suspicion of the part which he had played in Mme. Graslin’s 
life, and then the whole truth flashed upon him. Less over¬ 
awed than the rest by the religious influence, the child of the 
nineteenth century, the man of law felt a cruel sensation of 
dismay; the whole drama of Veronique’s inner life in the 
Hotel Graslin during Tascheron’s trial opened out before him. 
The whole of that tragic epoch reconstructed itself in his 
memory, lighted up by La Sauviat’s eyes, which gleamed with 


276 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


hate of him not ten paces away; those eyes seemed to direct 
a double stream of molten lead upon him. The old woman 
had forgiven him nothing. The impersonation of man’s jus¬ 
tice felt shudders run through his frame. He stood there 
heart-stricken and pallid, not daring to turn his eyes to the 
bed where the woman he had loved was lying, lived beneath 
the shadow of death’s hand, drawing strength from the very 
magnitude of her offense to quell her agony. Vertigo seized 
on him as he saw Veronique’s shrunken profile, a white out¬ 
line in sharp relief against the crimson damask. 

The mass began at eleven o’clock. When the cure of Vizay 
had read the epistle, the archbishop div^ested himself of his 
dalmatic, and took up his station in the doorway— 

“ Christians here assembled to witness the administration 
of extreme unction to the mistress of this house, you who are 
uniting your prayers to those of the church to make interces¬ 
sion with God for the salvation of her soul, learn that she 
thinks herself unworthy to receive the holy viaticum until she 
has made, for the edification of others, a public confession 
of her greatest sin. We withstood her pious desire, although 
this act of contrition was long in use in the church in the 
earliest Christian times; but as the afflicted woman tells us 
that the confession touches on the rehabilitation jof an un¬ 
happy child of this parish, we leave her free to follow the 
inspirations of repentance.” 

After these words, spoken with the benign dignity of a 
shepherd of souls, the archbishop turned and gave place to 
Veronique. The dying woman was seen, supported by her 
mother and the cure, two great and venerable symbols : did 
she not owe her double existence to the earthly mother who 
had borne her, and to the church, the mother of her soul ? 
Kneeling on a cushion, she clasped her hands and meditated 
for a moment to gather up and concentrate the strength to 
speak from some source derived from heaven. There was 
something unspeakably awful in that silent pause. No one 


VilRONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB, 277 

dared to look at his neighbor. All eyes were fixed on the 
ground. Yet when Veronique looked up, she met the public 
prosecutor’s glance, and the expression of that white face sent 
the color to her own. 

‘‘I should not have died in peace,” Veronique began, in a 
voice unlike her natural tone, ‘‘ if I had left behind the false 
impression which each one of you who hears me speak has 
possibly formed of me. In me you see a great sinner, who 
beseeches your prayers, and seeks to merit pardon by the 
public confession of her sin. So deeply has she sinned, so 
fatal were the consequences of her guilt, that it may be that 
no repentance will redeem it. And yet the greater my 
humiliation on earth, the less, doubtless, have I to dread from 
God’s anger in the heavenly kingdom whither I fain would go. 

“It is nearly twenty years since my father, who had such 
great belief in me, recommended a son of this parish to my 
care; he had seen in him a wish to live rightly, aptitude, and 
an excellent disposition. This young man was the unhappy 
Jean-Fran^ois Tascheron, who thenceforward attached himself 
to me as his benefactress. How was jt that my affection for 
him became a guilty one ? That explanation need not, I 
think, be required of me. Yet, perhaps, it might be thought 
that the purest possible motives were imperceptibly transformed 
by unheard-of self-sacrifice, by human frailty, by a host of 
causes which might seem to be extenuations of my guilt. 
But am I the less guilty because our noblest affections were my 
accomplices? I would rather admit, in spite of the barriers 
raised by the delicacy natural to our sex between me and the 
young man whom my father intrusted to me, that I, who by 
my education and social position might regard myself as his 
protege’s superior, listened, in an evil hour, to the voice of 
the tempter. I soon found that my maternal position brought 
me into contact with him so close that I could not but be 
sensible of his mute and delicate admiration. He was the 
first and only creature to appreciate me at my just value. 

W 


278 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


Perhaps, too, I myself was led astray by unworthy considera¬ 
tions. I thought that I could trust to the discretion of a 
young man who owed everything to me, whom chance had 
placed so far below me, albeit by birth we were equals. In 
fact, I found a cloak to screen my conduct in my name for 
charity and good deeds. Alas ! (and this is one of my worst 
sins) I hid my passion in the shadow of the altar. I made 
everything conduce to the miserable triumph of a mad passion, 
the most irreproachable actions, my love for my mother, acts 
of a devotion that was very real and sincere and through so 
many errors—all these things were so many links in a chain 
that bound me. My poor mother, whom I love so much, who 
hears me even now, was unwittingly and for a long while my 
accomplice. When her eyes were opened, I was too deeply 
committed to my dangerous way, and she found strength to 
keep my secret in the depths of her mother heart. Silence 
in her has thus become the loftiest of virtues. Love for her 
daughter overcame the love of God. Ah ! now I solemnly 
relieve her of the load of secrecy which she has carried. She 
shall end her days with no lie in her eyes and brow. May 
her motherhood absolve her, may her noble and sacred old 
age, crowned with virtues, shine forth in all its radiance, now 
that the link which bound her indirectly to touch such infamy 
is severed-” 

Here Veronique's sobs interrupted her words; Aline made 
her inhale salts. 

“ Only one other has hitherto been in this secret, the faith¬ 
ful servant who does me this last service ; she has, at least, 
feigned not to know what she must have known, but she hns 
been in the secret of the austerities by which I have broken 
this weak flesh. So I ask pardon of the world for having 
lived a lie, drawn into that lie by the remorseless logic of the 
world. 

“ Jean-Frangois Tascheron is not as guilty as men may have 
thought him. Oh, all you who hear me! I beg of you to 



VERONIQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 279 

remember how young he was, and that his frenzy was caused 
at least as much by the remorse which seized on me^ as by the 
spell of an involuntary attraction. And more, far more, do 
not forget that it was a sense of honor, if a mistaken sense of 
honor, which caused the greatest disaster of all. Neither of 
us could endure that life of continual deceits. He turned 
from them to my own greatness, and, unhappy that he was, 
sought to make our fatal love as little of a humiliation as 
might be to me. So I was the cause of his crime. Driven 
by necessity, the unhappy man, hitherto only guilty of too 
great a love for his idol, chose of all evil actions the one most 
irreparable. I knew nothing of it until the very moment 
when the deed was done. Even as it was being carried out, 
God overturned the whole fabric of crooked designs. I 
heard cries that ring even yet in my ears, and went into the 
house again. I knew that it was a struggle for life and death, 
and that I, the object of this mad endeavor, was powerless to 
interfere. For Tascheron was mad; I bear witness that he 
was mad !-” 

Here Veronique looked at the public prosecutor, and a 
deep audible sigh came from Denise. 

“ He lost his head when he saw his happiness (so he be¬ 
lieved it to be) destroyed by unforeseen circumstances. Love 
led him astray, then fate dragged him from a misdemeanor to 
a crime, and from a crime to a double murder. At any rate, 
when he left my mother’s house he was an innocent man ; 
when he returned, he was a murderer. I, and I only in the 
world, knew that the crime was not premeditated, nor accom¬ 
panied by the aggravating circumstances which brought the 
sentence of death on him. A hundred times I determined to 
give myself up to save him, and a hundred times a terrible 
but necessary heroism outweighed all other considerations, 
and the words died on my lips. Surely my presence a few 
steps away must have contributed to give him the hateful, 
base, cowardly courage of a murderer. If he had oeen 


280 


THE COUNTRY PARSON 


alone, he would have fled- It was I who had formed his 

nature, who had given him loftier thoughts and a greater 
heart; I knew him \ he was incapable of anything cowardly 
or base. Do justice to the innocent hand, do justice to him ! 
God in His mercy lets him sleep in the grave that you, guess¬ 
ing doubtless, the real truth, have watered with your tears! 
Punish and curse the guilty thing here before you ! When 
once the deed was done, I was horror-struck; I did all that 
I could to hide it. My father had left a charge to me, a 
childless woman; I was to bring one child of God’s family 

to God, and I brought him to the scaffold- Oh, heap all 

your reproaches upon me ! The hour has come ! ” 

Her eyes glittered with fierce pride as she spoke. The 
archbishop, standing behind her, with his pastoral cross held 
out above her head, no longer maintained his impassive 
attitude ; he covered his eyes with his right hand, A smoth¬ 
ered sound like a dying groan broke the silence, and two 
men—Gerard and Roubaud—caught Denise Tascheron in 
their arms. She had swooned away. The fire died down in 
Veronique’s eyes; she looked troubled, but the martyr’s 
serenity soon returned to her face. 

I deserve no praise, no blessings, for my conduct here, as 
you know now,” she said. ‘‘ In the sight of heaven I have 
led a life full of sharp penance, hidden from all other eyes, and 
heaven will value it at its just worth. My outward life has 
been a vast reparation of the evil that I have wrought; I have 
engraved my repentance in characters ineffaceable upon this 
wide land, a record that will last for ever. It is written 
everywhere in the fields grown green, in the growing town¬ 
ship, in the mountain streams turned from their courses into 
the plain, once wild and,barren, now fertile and productive. 
Not a tree shall be felled here for a century but the peasants 
will tell the tale of the remorse to which they owe its shade. 
In these ways the repentant spirit which should have inspired 
a long and useful life will still make its influence felt among 


VJtRONiQUE LAID IN THE TOMB. 281 

you for a long time to come. All that you should have owed 
to his talents and a fortune honorably acquired has been done 
for you by the executrix of his repentance, by her who caused 
his crime. All the wrong done socially has been repaired ; I 
have taken upon myself the work of a life cut short in its 
flower, the life intrusted to my guidance, the life for which I 
must shortly give an account-” 

Here once more the burning eyes were quenched in tears. 
She paused. 

‘‘There is one among those present,” she continued, 
“ whom I have hated with a hate which I thought must be 
eternal, simply because he did no more than his duty. He 
was the first instrument of my punishment. I was too close 
to the deed, my feet were dipped too deep in blood, I was 
bound to hate justice. I knew that there was a trace of evil 
passion in my heart, so long as that spark of anger should 

trouble it; I have had nothing to forgive, I have simply 

purged the corner where the evil one lurked. Whatever the 
victory cost, it is complete.” 

The public prosecutor turned a tear-stained face to Veron- 
ique. It was as if man’s justice was remorseful in him. Ver- 
onique, turning her face away to continue her story, met the 
eyes of an old friend; GrossetSte, bathed in tears, stretched 
out his hands entreatingly towards her. “It is enough ! ” he 
seemed to say. The heroic woman heard such a chorus of 
sobs about her, received so much sympathy, that she broke 

down; the balm of the general forgiveness was too much, 

weakness overcame her. Seeing that the sources of her 
daughter’s strength were exhausted, the old mother seemed to 
find in herself the vigor of a young woman; she h6ld out her 
arms to carry Veronique. 

“Christians,” said the archbishop, “you have heard the 
penitent’s confession ; it confirms the decree of man’s justice ; 
it may lay all scruples and anxiety on that score to rest. In 
this confession you ^ould find new reasons for uniting your 



282 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


prayers to those of the church, which offers to God the holy 
sacrifice of the mass to implore His mercy for the sinner after 
so grand a repentance.” 

The office was finished. Veronique followed all that was 
said with an expression of such inward peace that she no 
longer seemed to be the same woman. Her face wore a look 
of frank innocence, such as it might have worn in the days 
when, a pure and ingenuous girl, she dwelt under her father’s 
roof. Her brows grew white in the dawn of eternity, her face 
glowed golden in the light of heaven. Doubtless she caught 
something of its mystic harmonies; and in her longing to be 
made one with God on earth for the last time, she exerted all 
her powers of vitality to live. M. Bonnet came to the bed¬ 
side and gave her absolution; the archbishop anointed her 
with the holy oil, with a fatherly tenderness that revealed to 
those who stood about how dear he held this sheep that had 
been lost and was found. With that holy anointing the eyes 
that had wrought such mischief on earth were closed to the 
things of earth, the seal of the church was set on those two 
eloquent lips, and the ears that had listened to the inspiration 
of evil were closed for ever. All the senses, mortified by 
penitence, were thus sanctified ; the spirit of evil could have 
no power over this soul. 

Never had all the grandeur and deep meaning of a sacra¬ 
ment been apprehended more thoroughly than by those who 
saw the church’s care thus justified by the dying woman’s 
confession. After that preparation, Veronique received the 
body of Christ with a look of hope and joy that melted the 
icy barrier of unbelief at which the cure had so often knocked 
in vain. Roubaud, confounded, became a Catholic from that 
moment. 

Awful as the scene was, it was no less touching; and in its 
solemnity, as of the culrainating-point of a drama, it might 
have given some painter the subject of a masterpiece. When 
the mournful episode was over, and the words of the Gospel 


V£:R0N1QUE laid in the tomb. 283 

of St. John fell on the ears of the dying woman, she beck¬ 
oned to her mother to bring Francis back again. (The tutor 
had taken the boy out of the room.) When Francis knelt on 
the step by the bedside, the mother whose sins had been for¬ 
given felt free to lay her hands in blessing on his head, and so 
she drew her last breath. La Sauviat standing at the post she 
had filled for twenty years, faithful to the end. It was she, a 
heroine after her manner, who closed the eyes of the daughter 
who had suffered so much, and laid a kiss on them. 

Then all the priests and assistants came round the bed, and 
intoned the dread chant Be profundis by the light of the 
flaming torches; and from those sounds the people of the 
whole countryside kneeling without, together with the friends 
and all the servants praying in the hall, knew that the mother 
of the canton had passed away. Groans and sobs mingled 
with the chanting. The noble woman’s confession had not 
passed beyond the threshold of the drawing-room; it had 
reached none but friendly ears. When the peasants came 
from Montegnac, and all the district round about came in, each 
with a green spray, to bid their benefSttress a supreme farewell 
mingled with tears and prayers, they saw a representative of 
man’s justice, bowed down with anguish, holding the cold 
hand of the woman to whom all unwittingly he had meted out 
such a cruel but just punishment. 

Two days later and the public prosecutor, with Grosset^te, 
the archbishop, and the mayor, bore the pall when Mme. 
Graslin was carried to her last resting-place. Amid deep 
silence they laid her in the grave; no one uttered a word, for 
no one had the heart to speak, and all eyes were full of tears. 

She is a saint!” Everywhere the words were repeated 
along the roads which she had made, in the canton which 
owed its prosperity to her. It was as if the words were sown 
abroad across her fields to quicken the life in them. It struck 
nobody as a strange thing that Mme. Graslin should be buried 
beside Jean-Fran^ois Tascheron. She had not asked this; 


284 


THE COUNTRY PARSON. 


but a trace of pitying tenderness in the old mother prompted 
her to bid the sacristan put those together whom earth had 
separated by a violent death, whom one repentance should 
unite in purgatory. 

Mme. Graslin’s will fulfilled all expectations. She founded 
scholarships in the school at Limoges, and beds in the hospital, 
intended for the working classes only. A considerable sum 
(three hundred thousand francs in a period of six years) was 
left to purchase that part of the village called “ Tascheron’s,” 
and for building an almshouse there. It was to serve as an 
asylum for the sick and aged poor of the district, a lying-in 
hospital for destitute women, and a home for foundling chil¬ 
dren, and was to be known by the name of Tascheron’s Alms¬ 
house. Veronique directed that it was to be placed in the 
charge of the Franciscan Sisters, and fixed the salary of the 
head physician and house surgeon at four thousand francs. 
Mme. Graslin begged Roubaud to be the first head physician, 
and to superintend the execution of the sanitary arrangements 
and plans to be made by the architect, M. Gerard. She also 
endowed the commune of Montegnac with sufficient land to 
pay the taxes. A certain fund was put in the hands of the 
church to be used as determined in some exceptional cases; 
for the church was to be the guardian of the young ; and if any 
of the children in Montegnac should show a special aptitude 
for art or science or industrial pursuits, the far-sighted benevo¬ 
lence of the testatrix provided thus for their encouragement. 

The tidings of her death were received as the news of a 
calamity to the whole country, and no word that reflected on 
her memory went with it. 

Gerard, appointed Francis Graslin’s guardian, was required 
by the terms of the will to live at the chateau, and thither he 
went; but not until three months after Veronique’s death did 
he marry Denise Tascheron, in whom Francis found, as it 
were, a second mother. 


ALBERT SAVARON 

(^de Savarus). 

To Madame Emile Girardin. 

One of the few drawing-rooms where, under the Restora¬ 
tion, the archbishop of Besangon was sometimes to be seen, 
was that of the Baronne de Watteville, to whom he was par¬ 
ticularly attached on account of her religious sentiments. 

A word as to this lady, the most important lady of Besan- 
9on. 

Monsieur de Watteville, a descendant of the famous Watte¬ 
ville, the most successful and illustrious of murderers and 
renegades—his extraordinary adventures are too much a part 
of history to be related here—this nineteenth-century Mon¬ 
sieur de Watteville was as gentle and peaceable as his ancestor 
of the Grand Siecle had been passionate and turbulent. After 
living in the Comte^ like a wood-louse in the crack of a wainscot, 
he had married the heiress of the celebrated house of Rupt. 
Mademoiselle de Rupt brought twenty thousand francs a year 
in the funds to add to the ten thousand francs a year in real 
estate of the Baron de Watteville. The Swiss gentleman’s 
coat-of-arms (the Wattevilles are Swiss) was then borne as an 
escutcheon of pretense on the old shield of the Rupts. The 
marriage, arranged in 1802, was solemnized in 1815 after the 
second Restoration. Within three years of the birth of a 
daughter all Madame de Watteville’s grandparents were 
dead and their estates wound up. Monsieur de Watteville’s 
house was then sold, and they settled in the Rue de la Prefec¬ 
ture in the fine old mansion of the Rupts, with an immense 
garden stretching to the Rue du Perron. Madame de Watte- 
* La Franche Comt^. 


( 285 ) 


286 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


ville, devout as a girl, became even more so after her marriage. 
She was one of the queens of the saintly brotherhood which 
gives the upper circles of Besan^on a solemn air and prudish 
manners in harmony with the character of the town. 

Monsieur le Baron de Watteville, a dry, lean man, devoid 
of intelligence, looked worn out without any one knowing 
whereby, for he enjoyed the profoundest ignorance; but as his 
wife was a red-haired woman, and of a stern nature that 
became proverbial (we still say “ as sharp as Madame de Watte¬ 
ville”) some wits of the legal profession declared that he had 
been worn against that rock —Rupt is obviously derived from 
rapes. Scientific students of social phenomena will not fail to 
have observed that Rosalie was the only offspring of the union 
between the Wattevilles and the Riipts. 

Monsieur de Watteville spent his existence in a handsome 
workshop with a lathe; he was a turner ! As subsidiary to this 
pursuit, he took up a fancy for making collections. Philo¬ 
sophical doctors, devoted to the study of madness, regard 
this tendency toward collecting as a first degree of mental 
aberration when it is set on small things. The Baron de 
Watteville treasured shells and geological fragments of the 
neighborhood of Besangon. Some contradictory folk, espe¬ 
cially women, would say of Monsieur de Watteville, He has 
a noble soul! He perceived from the first days of his married 
life that he would never be his wife’s master, so he threw 
himself into a mechanical occupation and good living.” 

The house of the Ruptswas not devoid of a certain magnifi¬ 
cence worthy of Louis XIV., and bore traces of the nobility 
of the two families who had mingled in 1815. The chandeliers 
of glass cut in the shape of leaves, the brocades, the damask, 
the carpets, the gilt furniture, were all in harmony with the 
old liveries and the old servants. Though served in blackened 
family plate, round a looking-glass tray furnished with Dresden 
china, the food was exquisite. Th-e wines selected by Mon¬ 
sieur de Watteville, who, to occupy his time and vary his 


ALBERT SAVA RON, 


287 


employments, was his own butler, enjoyed a sort of fame 
throughout the department. Madame de Watteville’s fortune 
was a fine one; while her husband’s, which consisted only of 
the estate of Rouxey, worth about ten thousand francs a year, 
was not increased by inheritance. It is needless to add that in 
consequence of Madame de Watteville’s close intimacy with 
the archbishop, the three or four clever or remarkable abbes 
of the diocese who were not averse to good feeding were very 
much at home at her house. 

At a ceremonial dinner given in honor of I know not 
whose wedding, at the beginning of September, 1834, when 
the women were standing in a circle round the drawing-room 
fire, and the men in groups by the windows, every one 
exclaimed with pleasure at the entrance of Monsieur I’Abbe 
de Grancey, who was announced. 

Well, and the lawsuit ? ” they all cried. 

Won ! ” replied the vicar-general. “ The verdict of the 
court, from which we had no hope, you know why-” 

This was an allusion to the members of the First Court of 
Appeal of 1830 ; the Legitimists had almost all withdrawn. 

The verdict is in our favor on every point, and reverses 
the decision of the lower court.” 

‘‘Everybody thought you were done for.” 

“And we should have been, but for me. I told our advo¬ 
cate to be off to Paris, and at the crucial moment I was able 
to secure a new pleader, to whom we owe our victory, a 
wonderful man-” 

“At Besan^on? ” said Monsieur de Watteville, guilelessly. 

“At Besan^on,” replied the Abbe de Grancey. 

“ Oh yes, Savaron,” said a handsome young man sitting 
near the Baroness, and named de Soulas. 

“ He spent five or six nights over it; he devoured docu¬ 
ments and briefs; he had seven or eight interviews of several 
hours with me,” continued Monsieur de Grancey, who had 
just reappeared at the Hotel de Rupt for the first time in 




288 


ALBERT SAVARON, 


three weeks. In short, Monsieur Savaron has just com¬ 
pletely beaten the celebrated lawyer whom our adversaries 
had sent for from Paris. This young man is wonderful, the 
bigwigs say. Thus the chapter is twice victorious; it has 
triumphed in law and also in politics, since it has vanquished 
Liberalism in the person of the counsel of our municipality. 

‘ Our adversaries,’ so our advocate said, ^must not expect to 
find readiness on all sides to ruin the archbishoprics.’ The 
president was obliged to enforce silence. All the townsfolk of 
Besangon applauded. Thus the possession of the buildings of 
the old convent remains with the Chapter of the Cathedral of 
Besan^on. Monsieur Savaron, however, invited his Parisian 
opponent to dine with him as they came out of court. He 
accepted, saying, ‘ Honor to every conqueror,’ and com¬ 
plimented him on his success without bitterness.” 

“And where did you unearth this lawyer?” said Madame 
de Watteville. “ I never heard his name before.” 

“ Why, you can see his windows from here,” repUed the 
vicar-general. “ Monsieur Savaron lives in the Rue du Per¬ 
ron ; the garden of his house joins on to yours.” 

“But he is not a native of the county,” said Monsieur de 
Watteville. 

“ So little is he a native of any place, that no one knows 
where he comes from,” said Madame de Chavoncourt. 

“But who is he?” asked Madame de Watteville, taking 
the abbe’s arm to go into the dining-room. “ If he is a stran¬ 
ger, by what chance has he settled at Besan^on ? It is a strange 
fancy for a barrister.” 

“ Very strange ! ” echoed Amedee de Soulas, whose biog¬ 
raphy is here necessary to the understanding of this tale. 

In all ages France and England have carried on an ex¬ 
change of trifles, which is all the more constant because it 
evades the tyranny of the custom-house. The fashion that is 
called English in Paris is called French in London, and this 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


289 


is reciprocal. The hostility of the two nations is suspended 
on two points—the uses of words and the fashion of dress. 
“ God save the King,” the national air of England, is a tune 
written by Lulli for the chorus of “ Esther ” or of “Athalie.” 
Hoops, introduced at Paris by an Englishwoman, were in¬ 
vented in London, it is known why, by a Frenchwoman, the 
notorious Duchess of Portsmouth. They were at first so 
jeered at that the first Englishwoman who appeared in them 
at the Tuileries narrowly escaped being crushed by the crowd; 
but they were adopted. This fashion tyrannized over the 
ladies of Europe for half a century. At the peace of 1815, 
for a year, the long waists of the English were a standing jest; 
all Paris went to see Pothier and Brunet in ^‘The Funny 
Englishwomen;” but in 1816 and 1817 the belt of the 
Frenchwoman, which in 1814 cut her across the bosom, 
gradually descended till it reached the hips. 

Within ten years England has made two little gifts to our 
language. The Incroyable, the Mej'veilleux, the Elegant, the 
three successors of the petit-inaitre of discreditable etymology, 
have made way for the “dandy” and the “lion.” The 
lion is not the parent of the lionne. The lionne is due to the 
famous song by Alfred de Musset— 

“ Have you seen in Barcelona 

She that is my mistress and my lionne.” 

There has been a fusion—or, if you prefer it, a confusion— 
of the two words and the leading ideas. When an absurdity 
can amuse Paris, which devours as many masterpieces as ab¬ 
surdities, the provinces can hardly be deprived of them. So, 
as soon as the lion paraded Paris with his mane, his beard 
and mustaches, his waistcoats and his eyeglass, maintained in 
its place, without the help of his hands, by the contraction 
of his cheek and eye-socket, the chief towns of some depart¬ 
ments had their sub-lions, who protested by the smartness of 
19 


290 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


their trousers-straps against the untidiness of their fellow- 
townsmen. 

Thus, in 1834, Besangon could boast of a lion, in the per¬ 
son of Monsieur Amedee-Sylvain de Soulas, spelt Souleyas at 
the time of the Spanish occupation. Arnedee de Soulas is, 
perhaps, the only man in Besan9on descended from a Spanish 
family. Spain sent men to manage her business in the Comte, 
but very few Spaniards settled there. The Soulas remained 
in consequence of their connection with Cardinal Gran- 
velle. 

Young Monsieur de Soulas was always talking of leaving Be- 
san9on, a dull town, church-going, and not literary, a military 
centre and garrison town, of which the manners and customs 
and physiognomy are worth describing. This opinion allowed 
of his lodging, like a man uncertain of the future, in three 
very scantily furnished rooms at the end of the Rue Neuve, 
just where it opens into the Rue de la Prefecture. 

Young Monsieur de Soulas could not possibly live without 
a tiger. This tiger was the son of one of his farmers, a small 
servant aged fourteen, thick-set, and named Babylas. The 
lion dressed his tiger very smartly—a short tunic coat of iron- 
gray cloth, belted with patent leather, bright blue plush 
breeches, a red waistcoat, polished leather top-boots, a shiny 
hat with black lacing, and brass buttons with the arms of 
Soulas. Arnedee gave this boy white cotton gloves and his 
washing, and thirty-six francs a month to keep himself—a 
sum that seemed enormous to the grisettes of Besan^on : four 
hundred and twenty francs a year to a child of fifteen, with¬ 
out counting extras! The extras consisted in the price for 
which he could sell his turned clothes, a present when Soulas 
exchanged one of his horses, and the perquisite of the manure. 
The two horses, treated with sordid economy, cost, one with 
another, eight hundred a year. His bills for articles received 
from Paris, such as perfumery, cravats, jewelry, patent black¬ 
ing, and clothes, ran to another twelve hundred francs. Add 


ALBERT SAFA ROM 


291 


Co this the groom, or tiger, the horses, a very superior style 
of dress, and six hundred francs a year for rent, and you will 
see a grand total of three thousand francs. 

Now, Monsieur de Soulas’ father had left him only four 
thousand francs a year, the income from some cottage farms 
in rather bad repair, which required keeping up, a charge 
which lent painful uncertainty to the rents. The lion had 
hardly three francs a day left for food, amusements, and 
gambling. He very often dined out, and breakfasted with 
remarkable frugality. When he was positively obliged to 
dine at his own cost, he sent his tiger to -bring a couple of 
dishes from a cook-shop, never spending more than twenty- 
five sous. 

Young Monsieur de Soulas was supposed to be a spendthrift, 
recklessly extravagant, whereas the poor man made the two 
ends meet in the year with a keenness and skill which would 
have done honor to a thrifty housewife. At Besangon in 
those days no one knew how great a tax on a man’s capital 
were six francs spent in polish to spread on his boots or 
shoes, yellow gloves at fifty sous a pair, cleaned in the deepest 
secrecy to make them three times renewed, cravats costing ten 
francs, and lasting three months, four waistcoats at twenty- 
five francs, and trousers fitting close to the boots. How could 
he do otherwise, since we see women in Paris bestowing their 
special attention on simpletons who visit them, and cut out 
the most remarkable men by means of these frivolous advan¬ 
tages, which a man can buy for fifteen louis, and get his hair 
curled and a fine linen shirt into the bargain? 

If this unhappy youth should seem to you to have become 
a lion on very cheap terms, you must know that Amedee de 
Soulas had been three times to Switzerland, by coach and in 
short stages, twice to Paris, and once from Paris to England. 
He passed as a well-informed traveler, and could say, “In 

England, where I went-” The dowagers of the town 

would say to him, “You, who have been in England-” 




292 


ALBERT SAVARON, 


He had been as far as Lombardy, and seen the shores of the 
Italian lakes. He read new books. Finally, when he was 
cleaning his gloves, the tiger Babylas replied to callers, 
‘‘Monsieur is very busy." An attempt had been made to 
withdraw Monsieur Amedee de Soulas from circulation by 
pronouncing him “A man of advanced ideas." Amedee had 
the gift of uttering with the gravity of a native the common¬ 
places that were in fashion, which gave him the credit of be¬ 
ing one of the most enlightened of the nobility. His person 
was garnished with fashionable trinkets, and his head furnished 
with ideas hall-marked by the press. 

In 1834 Amedee was a young man of five-and-twenty, of 
medium height, dark, with a very prominent thorax, well- 
made shoulders, rather plump legs, feet already fat, white 
dimpled hands, a beard under his chin, mustaches worthy of 
the garrison, a good-natured, fat, rubicund face, a flat nose, 
and brown expressionless eyes; nothing Spanish about him. 
He was progressing rapidly in the direction of obesity, which 
would be fatal to his pretensions. His nails were well kept, 
his beard trimmed, the smallest details of his dress attended to 
with English precision. Hence Amddee de Soulas was looked 
upon as the finest man in Besanyon. A hairdresser who waited 
upon him at a fixed hour—another luxury, costing sixty francs 
a year—held him up as the sovereign authority in matters of 
fashion and elegance. 

Amedee slept late, dressed and went out towards noon, to 
go to one of his farms and practice pistol-shooting. He 
attached as much importance to this exercise as Lord Byron 
did in his later days. Then at three o’clock he came home, 
admired on horseback by the grisettes and the ladies who 
happened to be at their windows. After an affectation of 
study or business, which seemed to engage him till four, he 
dressed to dine out, spent the evening in the drawing-rooms 
of the aristocracy of Besan^on playing whist, and went home 
to bed at eleven. No life could be more above-board, more 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


293 


prudent, or more irreproachable, for he punctually attended 
the services at church on Sundays and holy days. 

To enable you to understand how exceptional is such a life, 
it is necessary to devote a few words to an account of Besangon. 
No town ever offered more deaf and dumb resistance to pro¬ 
gress. At Besangon the officials, the employes, the military, 
in short, every one engaged in governing it, sent thither from 
Paris to fill a post of any kind, are all spoken of by the 
expressive general name of ‘‘The Colony.” The colony is 
neutral ground, the only ground where, as in church, the 
upper rank and the townsfolk of the place can meet. Here, 
fired by a word, a look, or gesture, are started those feuds 
between house and house, between a woman of rank and a 
citizen’s wife, which endure till death, and widen the impass¬ 
able gulf which parts the two classes of society. With the 
exception of the Clermont-Mont-Saint-Jean, the Beauffremont, 
the de Scey, and the Gramont families, with a few others who 
come only to stay on their estates in the Comte, the aristoc¬ 
racy of Besangon dates no further back than a couple of 
centuries, the time of the conquest by Louis XIV. This 
little world is essentially of the parlement^ and arrogant, stiff, 
solemn, uncompromising, haughty beyond all comparison, 
even with the Court of Vienna, for in this the nobility of 
Besan9on would put the Viennese drawing-rooms to shame. 
As to Victor Hugo, Nodier, Fourier, the glories of the town, 
they are never mentioned, no one thinks about them. The 
marriages in these families are arranged in the cradle, so 
rigidly are the greatest things settled as well as the smallest. 
No stranger, no intruder, ever finds his way into one of these 
houses, and to obtain an introduction for the colonels or 
officers of title belonging to the first families in France when 
quartered there requires efforts of diplomacy which Prince 
Talleyrand would gladly have mastered to use at a congress. 

In 1834 Am^dee was the only man in Besan^on who wore 
trousers-straps; this will account for the young man’s being 


294 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


regarded as a lion. And a little anecdote will enable you to 
understand the city of Besangon. 

Some time before the opening of this story, the need arose 
at the prefecture for bringing an editor from Paris for the 
official newspaper, to enable it to hold its own against the 
little Gazette, dropped at Besan^on by the great Gazette, and 
the Patriot, which frisked in the hands of the Republicans. 
Paris sent them a young man, knowing nothing about la 
Franche Comte, who began by writing them a leading article 
of the school of the Charivari. The chief of the moderate 
party, a member of the municipal council, sent for the jour¬ 
nalist and said to him, “ You must understand, monsieur, that 
we are serious, more than serious—tiresome ; we resent being 
amused, and are furious at having been made to laugh. Be as 
hard of digestion as the toughest disquisitions in the Revue 
lies Deux Mondes, and you will hardly reach the level of 
Besangon.” 

The editor took the hint, and thenceforth spoke the most 
incomprehensible philosophical lingo. His success was com¬ 
plete. 

If young Monsieur de Sonias did not fall in the esteem of 
Besan^on society, it was out of pure vanity on its part; the 
aristocracy were happy to affect a modern air, and to be able 
to show any Parisians of rank who visited the Comte a young 
man who bore some likeness to them. 

All this hidden labor, all this dust thrown in people’s eyes, 
this display of folly and latent prudence, had an object, or the 
lion of Besangon would have been no son of the soil. Amedee 
wanted to achieve a good marriage by proving some day that 
his farms were not mortgaged, and that he had some savings. 
He wanted to be the talk of the town, to be the finest and 
best-dressed man there, in order to win first the attention, 
and then the hand, of Mademoiselle Rosalie de Watteville. 

In 1830, at the time when young Monsieur de Soulas was 
setting up in business as a dandy, Rosalie was but fourteen. 


ALBERT SAVA ROM 


295 


Hence, in 1834, Mademoiselle de Watteville had reached the 
age when young persons are easily struck by the peculiarities 
which attracted the attention of the town to Amedee. There 
are many /ions who become /ions out of self-interest and specu¬ 
lation. The Wattevilles, who for twelve years had been draw¬ 
ing an income of fifty thousand francs, did not spend more 
than four-and-twenty thousand francs a year, while receiving 
all the upper circle of Besan^on every Monday and Friday. 
On Monday they gave a dinner, on Friday an evening party. 
Thus, in twelve years, what a sum must have accumulated 
from twenty-six thousand francs a year, saved and invested 
with the judgment that distinguishes those old families! It 
was very generally supposed that Madame de Watteville, 
thinking she had land enough, had placed her savings in the 
three per cents., in 1830. Rosalie’s dowry would therefore, 
as the best informed opined, amount to about twenty thousand 
francs a year. So for the last five years Amedee had worked 
like a mole to get into the highest favor of the severe Baroness, 
while laying himself out to flatter Mademoiselle de Watteville’s 
conceit. 

Madame de Watteville was in the secret of the devices by 
which Amedee succeeded in keeping up his rank in Besangon, 
and esteemed him highly for it. Soulas had placed himself 
under her wing when she was thirty, and at that time, had 
dared to admire her and make her his idol; he had got so far 
as to be allowed—he alone in the world—to pour out to her 
all the unseemly gossip which almost all very precise women 
love to hear, being authorized by their superior virtue to look 
into the gulf without falling, and into the devil’s snares with¬ 
out being caught. Do you understand why the lion did not 
allow himself the very smallest intrigue ? He lived a public life, 
in the street so to speak, on purpose to play the part of a lover 
sacrificed to duty by the Baroness, and to feast her mind with 
the sins she had forbidden to her senses. A man who is so 
privileged as to be allowed to pour light stories into the ear of 


296 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


a bigot is in her eyes a charming man. If this exemplary 
youth had better known the human heart, he might without 
risk have allowed himself some flirtations among the grisettes 
of Besan^on who looked up to him as a king; his affairs might 
perhaps have been all the more hopeful with the strict and 
prudish Baroness. To Rosalie our Cato affected prodigality ; 
he professed a life of elegance, showing her in perspective the 
splendid part played by a woman of fashion in Paris, whither 
he meant to go as Depute. 

All these manoeuvres were crowned with complete success. 
In 1834 the mothers of the forty noble families composing the 
high society of Besangon quoted Monsieur Am^dee de Soulas 
as the most charming young man in the town ; no one would 
have dared to dispute his place as cock of the walk at the 
Hotel de Rupt, and all Besangon regarded him as Rosalie de 
Watteville’s future husband. There had even been some ex¬ 
change of ideas on the subject between the Baroness and Amed^e, 
to which the Baron’s apparent nonentity gave some certainty. 

Mademoiselle de Watteville, to whom her enormous pros¬ 
pective fortune at that time lent considerable importance, had 
been brought up exclusively within the precincts of the Hotel 
de Rupt—which her mother rarely quitted, so devoted was she 
to her dear archbishop—and severely repressed by an exclu¬ 
sively religious education, and by her mother’s despotism, 
which held her rigidly to principles. Rosalie knew abso¬ 
lutely nothing. It is knowledge to have learned geography 
from Guthrie, sacred history, ancient history, the history of 
France, and the four rules, all passed through the sieve of an 
old Jesuit? Dancing and music were forbidden, as being 
more likely to corrupt life than to grace it. The Baroness 
taught her daughter every conceivable stitch in tapestry and 
women’s work—plain sewing, embroidery, knitting. At 
seventeen Rosalie had never read anything but the ‘‘ Lettres 
6difiantes,” and some works on heraldry. No newspaper had 
ever defiled her sight. She attended mass at the Cathedral 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


297 


every morning, taken there by her mother, came back to 
breakfast, did needlework after a little walk in the garden, 
and received visitors, sitting with the Baroness until dinner¬ 
time. Then, after dinner, excepting on Mondays and Fri¬ 
days, she accompanied Madame de Watteville to other houses 
to spend the evening, without being allowed to talk more 
than the maternal rule permitted. 

At eighteen Mademoiselle de Watteville was a slight, thin 
girl with a flat figure, fair, colorless, and insignificant to the 
last degree. Her eyes, of a very light blue, borrowed beauty 
from their lashes, which, when downcast, threw a shadow on 
her cheeks. A few freckles marred the whiteness of her fore¬ 
head, which was shapely enough. Her face was exactly like 
those of Albert Diirer’s saints, or those of the painters before 
Perugino ; the same plump, though slender modeling, the 
same delicacy saddened by ecstasy, the same severe guileless¬ 
ness. Everything about her, even to her attitude, was sugges¬ 
tive of those virgins, whose beauty is only revealed in its 
mystical radiance to the eyes of the studious connoisseur. 
She had fine hands though red, and a pretty foot, the foot of 
an aristocrat. 

She habitually wore simple checked cotton dresses; but on 
Sundays and in the evenings her mother allowed her silk. 
The cut of her frocks, made at Besangon, also made her ugly, 
while her mother tried to borrow grace, beauty, and elegance 
from Paris fashions ; for through Monsieur de Soulas she pro¬ 
cured the smallest trifles of her dress from there. Rosalie 
had never worn a pair of silk stockings or thin boots, but 
always cotton stockings and leather shoes. On high days she 
was dressed in a muslin frock, her hair plainly dressed, and 
had bronze kid shoes. 

This education, and her own modest demeanor, hid in 
Rosalie a spirit of iron. Physiologists and profound observers 
will tell you, perhaps to your great astonishment, that tem¬ 
pers, characteristics, wit, or genius reappear in families at long 


298 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


intervals, precisely like what are known as hereditary diseases. 
Thus talent, like the gout, sometimes skips over two genera¬ 
tions. We have an illustrious example of this phenomenon 
in George Sand, in whom are resuscitated the force, the 
power, and the imaginative faculty of the Marechal de Saxe, 
whose natural granddaughter she is. 

The decisive character and romantic daring of the famous 
Watteville had reappeared in the soul of his grand-niece, 
reinforced by the tenacity and pride of blood of the Rupts. 
But these qualities—or faults, if you will have it so—were as 
deeply buried in this young girlish soul, apparently so weak 
and yielding, as the seething lavas within a hill before it be¬ 
comes a volcano. Madame de Watteville alone, perhaps, sus¬ 
pected this inheritance from two strains. She was so severe 
to her Rosalie that she replied one day to the archbishop, 
v/ho blamed her for being too hard on the child, Leave me 
to manage her, monseigneur. I know her! She has more 
than one Beelzebub in her skin I ” 

The Baroness kept all the keener watch over her daughter, 
because she considered her honor as a mother to be at stake. 
After all, she had nothing else to do. Clotilde de Rupt, at 
this time five-and-thirty, and as good as widowed, with a 
husband who turned egg-cups in every variety of wood, who 
set his mind on making wheels with six spokes out of iron- 
wood, and manufactured snuff-boxes for every one of his 
acquaintance, flirted in strict propriety with Amedee de Soulas. 
When this young man was in the house, she alternately dis¬ 
missed and recalled her daughter, and tried to detect 
symptoms of jealousy in that youthful soul, so as to have 
occasion to repress them. She imitated the police in its deal¬ 
ings with the Republicans; but she labored in vain. Rosalie 
showed no symptoms of rebellion. Then the arid bigot 
accused her daughter of perfect insensibility. Rosalie knew 
her mother well enough to be sure that if she had thought 
young Monsieur de Soulas nice^ she would have drawn down 


ALBER T SA VAR ON. 


299 


on herself a smart reproof. Thus, to all her mother’s incite¬ 
ment she replied merely by such phrases as are wrongly called 
Jesuitical—wrongly, because the Jesuits were strong, and such 
reservations are the spiked wall behind which weakness 
takes refuge. Then the mother regarded the girl as a dissem¬ 
bler. If by mischance a spark of the true nature of the Watte- 
villes and the Rupts blazed out, the mother armed herself with 
the respect due from children to their parents to reduce Rosalie 
to passive obedience. 

This covert battle was carried on in the most secret seclusion 
of domestic life, with closed doors. The vicar-general, the 
dear Abbe Grancey, the friend of the late archbishop, clever 
as he was in his capacity of the chief Father Confessor of the 
diocese, could not discover whether the struggle had stirred 
up some hatred between the mother and daughter, whether 
the mother was jealous in anticipation, or whether the court 
Amedee was paying to the girl through her mother had not 
overstepped its due limits. Being a friend of the family, 
neither mother nor daughter confessed to him. Rosalie, a 
little too much harried, morally, about young de Soulas, could 
not abide him, to use a homely phrase, and when he spoke to 
her, trying to take her heart by surprise, she received him but 
coldly. This aversion, discerned only by her mother’s eye, 
was a constant subject of admonition. 

“ Rosalie, I cannot imagine why you affect such coldness 
towards Amedee. Is it because he is a friend of the family, 
and because we like him—your father and I ? ” 

“Well, mamma,” replied the poor child one day, “if I 
made him welcome, should I not be still more in the wrong ? ” 

“ What do you mean by that ? ” cried Madame de Watte 
ville. “ What is the meaning of such words? Your mother 
is unjust, no doubt, and, according to you, would be so in any 
case ! Never let such an answer pass your lips again to your 
mother-” and so forth. 

This quarrel lasted three hours and three-quarters. Rosalie 



300 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


noted the time. Her mother, pale with fury, sent her to her 
room, where Rosalie pondered on the meaning of this scene 
without discovering it, so guileless was she. Thus young 
Monsieur de Soulas, who was supposed by everyone to be very 
near the end he was aiming at, all neckcloths set, and by dint 
of pots of patent blacking—an end which required so much 
waxing of his mustaches, so many smart waistcoats, wore out 
so many horseshoes and stays—for he wore a leather vest, the 
stays of the lion —Amedee, I say, was farther away than any 
chance comer, although he had on his side the worthy and noble 
Abbe de Grancey. 

“ Madame,” said Monsieur de Soulas, addressing the Baron¬ 
ess, while waiting till his soup was cool enough to swallow, 
and affecting to give a romantic turn to his narrative, ‘‘one 
fine morning the mail-coach dropped at the Hotel National a 
gentleman from Paris, who, after seeking apartments, made up 
his mind in favor of the first floor in Mademoiselle Galard’s 
house, Rue du Perron. Then the stranger went straight to 
the Mairie, and had himself registered as a resident with all 
political qualifications. Finally, he had his name entered on 
the list of barristers to the court, showing his title in due 
form, and he left his card on all his new colleagues, the 
ministerial officials, the councilors of the court and the mem¬ 
bers of the bench, with the name, ‘ Albert Savaron.’ ” 

“The name of Savaron is famous,” said Mademoiselle de 
Watteville, who was strong in heraldic information. “ The 
Savarons of Savarus are one of the oldest, noblest, and richest 
families in Belgium.” 

“ He is a Frenchman, and no man’s son,” replied Amedee 
de Soulas. “If he wishes to bear the arms of the Savarons 
of Savarus, he must add a bar-sinister. There is no one left 
of the Brabant family but a Mademoiselle de Savarus, a rich 
heiress, and unmarried.” 

“ The bar-sinister is, of course, the badge of a bastard; 


ALBERT SAVA RON, 


301 


but the bastard of a Comte de Savarus is noble,” answered 
Rosalie. 

“ Enough, that will do, mademoiselle ! ” said the Baroness. 

“You insisted on her learning heraldry,” said Monsieur de 
Watteville, “and she knows it very well.” 

“ Go on, I beg. Monsieur de Soulas.” 

“ You may suppose that in a town where everything is 
classified, known, pigeon-holed, ticketed, and numbered, as 
in Besan^on, Albert Savaron was received without hesitation 
by the lawyers of the town. They were satisfied to say, 
‘ Here is a man who does not know his Besan9on. Who the 
devil can have sent him here? What can he hope to do? 
Sending his card to the judges instead of calling in person! 
What a blunder! * And so, three days after, Savaron had 
ceased to exist. He took as his servant old Monsieur Galard’s 
man—Galard being dead—Jerome, who can cook a little. 
Albert Savaron was all the more completely forgotten, because 
no one had seen him or met him anywhere.” 

“ Then, does he not go to mass? ” asked Madame de Cha- 
voncourt. 

“ He goes on Sundays to Saint-Pierre, but to the early 
service, at eight in the morning. He rises every night between 
one and two in the morning, works till eight, has his break¬ 
fast, and then goes on working. He walks in his garden, 
going round fifty or perhaps sixty times; then he goes in, 
dines, and goes to bed between six and seven.” 

“ How did you learn all that?” Madame de Chavoncourt 
asked Monsieur Soulas. 

“In the first place, madame, I live in the Rue Neuve, at 
the corner of the Rue du Perron ; I look out on the house 
where this mysterious personage lodges; then, of course, there 
are communications between my tiger and Jerome.” 

“And you gossip with Babylas! ” exclaimed Madame de 
Chavoncourt. 

“What would you have me do out riding?” 


302 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


Well—and how was it that you engaged a stranger for 
your defense? ” asked the Baroness, thus placing the conversa¬ 
tion in the hands of the vicar-general. 

“The president of the court played this pleader a trick by 
appointing him to defend at rhe assizes a half-witted peasant 
accused of forgery. But Monsieur Savaron procured the poor 
man’s acquittal by proving his innocence and showing, that 
he had been a tool in the hands of the real culprits. Not 
only did his line of defense succeed, but it led to the arrest 
of two of the witnesses, who were proved guilty and con¬ 
demned. His speech struck the court and the jury. One of 
these, a merchant, placed a difficult case next day in the 
hands of Monsieur Savaron, and he won it. In the position 
in which we found ourselves. Monsieur Berryer finding it im¬ 
possible to come to Besan^on, Monsieur de Garcenault ad¬ 
vised him to employ this Monsieur Albert Savaron, foretelling 
our success. As soon as I saw him and heard him, I felt faith 
in him, and I was not wrong.” 

“Is he then so extraordinary?” asked Madame de Cha- 
voncourt. 

“ Certainly, madame,” replied the vicar-general. 

“Well, tell us about it,” said Madame de Watteville. 

“The first time I saw him,” said the Abbe de Grancey, 
“ he received me in his outer room next the ante-room—old 
Galard’s drawing-room—which he has had painted like old 
oak, and which I found to be entirely lined with law-books, 
arranged on shelves also painted as old oak. The painting 
and the books are the sole decoration of the room, for the 
furniture consists of an old writing-table of carved wood, six 
old armchairs covered with tapestry, window curtains of gray 
stuff bordered with green, and a green carpet over the floor. 
The ante-room stove heats this library as well. As I waited 
there I did not picture my advocate as a young man. But 
this singular setting is in perfect harmony with his person ; 
for Monsieur Savaron came out in a black merino dressing- 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


303 


gown tied with a red cord, red slippers, a red flannel waist¬ 
coat, and a red smoking-cap.” 

“The devil’s colors ! ” exclaimed Madame de Watteville. 

“Yes,” said the abbe; “but a magnificent head. Black 
hair already streaked with a little gray, hair like that of Saint 
Peter and Saint Paul in pictures, with thick shining curls, 
hair as stilf as horsehair; a round white throat like a woman’s; 
a splendid forehead, furrowed by the strong median line which 
great schemes, great thoughts, deep meditations stamp on a 
great man’s brow; an olive complexion marbled with red, a 
square nose, eyes of flame, hollow cheeks, with two long lines 
betraying much suffering, a mouth with a sardonic smile, and a 
small chin, narrow, and too short; crows’ feet on his temples; 
deep-set eyes, moving in their sockets like burning balls; but, 
in spite of all these indications of a violently passionate nature, 
his manner was calm, deeply resigned, and his voice of pene¬ 
trating sweetness, which surprised me in court by its easy 
flow'; a true orator’s voice, now clear and appealing, some¬ 
times insinuating, but a voice of thunder when needful, and 
lending itself to sarcasm to become incisive. 

“ Monsieur Albert Savaron is of middle height, neither 
stout nor thin. And his hands are those of a prelate. 

“ The second time I called on him he received me in his 
bedroom, adjoining the library, and smiled at my astonish¬ 
ment when I saw there a wretched chest of drawers, a shabby 
carpet, a camp-bed, and cotton window-curtains. He came 
out of his private room, to which no one is admitted, as 
Jerome informed me; the man did not go in, but merely 
knocked at the door. 

“ The third time he was breakfasting in his library on the 
most frugal fare; but on this occasion, as he had spent the 
night studying our documents, as I had my attorney with me,' 
and as that worthy Monsieur Girardet is long-winded, I had 
leisure to study the stranger. He certainly is no ordinary 
man. There is more than one secret behind that face, at 


304 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


once so terrible and so gentle, patient and yet impatient, 
broad and yet hollow. I saw, too, that he stooped a little, 
like all men who have some heavy burden to bear.” 

Why did so eloquent a man leave Paris ? For what pur¬ 
pose did he come to Besangon ? ” asked pretty Madame de 
Chavoncourt. Could no one tell him how little chance a 
stranger has of succeeding here ? The good folks of Besangon 
will make use of him, but they will not allow him to make 
use of them. Why, having come, did he make so little 
effort that it needed a freak of the president’s to bring him 
forward ? ” 

‘‘After carefully studying that fine head,” said the abb6, 
looking keenly at the lady who had interrupted him, in such 
a way as to suggest that there was something he would not 
tell, “ and especially after hearing him this morning reply to 
one of the bigwigs of the Paris bar, I believe that this man, 
who may be five-and-thirty, will by-and-by make a great 
sensation.” 

“ Why should we discuss him ? You have gained your 
action, and paid him,” said Madame de Watteville, watching 
her daughter, who, all the time the vicar-general had been 
speaking, seemed to hang on his lips. 

The conversation changed, and no more was heard of 
Albert Savaron. 

The portrait sketched by the cleverest of the vicars-general 
of the diocese had all the greater charm for Rosalie because 
there was a romance behind it. For the first time in her life 
she had come across the marvelous, the exceptional, which 
smiles on every youthful imagination, and which curiosity, so 
eager at Rosalie’s age, goes forth to meet half-way. What an 
ideal being was this Albert—gloomy, unhappy, eloquent, 
laborious, as compared by Mademoiselle de Watteville to that 
chubby fat Count, bursting with health, paying compliments, 
and talking of the fashions in the very face of the splendor 
of the old Counts of Rupt. Am^dee had cost her many 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


306 


quarrels and scoldings, and, indeed, she knew him only too 
well; while this Albert Savaron offered many enigmas to be 
solved. 

‘‘Albert Savaron de Savarus,” she repeated to herself. 

Now, to see him, to catch sight of him ! This was the 
desire of the girl to whom desire was hitherto unknown. She 
pondered in her heart, in her fancy, in her brain, the least 
phrases used by the Abbe de Grancey, for all his words had 
told. 

“A fine forehead?” said she to herself, looking at the 
head of every man seated at the table; “I do not see one 
fine one. Monsieur de Soulas’ is too prominent; Monsieur 
de Grancey’s is fine, but he is seventy, and has no hair, it is 
impossible to see where his forehead ends.” 

“ What is the matter, Rosalie; you are eating nothing?” 

“I am not hungry, mamma,” said she. “A prelate’s 

hands-” she went on to herself. “I cannot remember 

our handsome archbishop’s hands, though he confirmed me.” 

Finally, in the midst of her coming and going in the laby¬ 
rinth of her meditations, she remembered a lighted window 
she had seen from her bed, gleaming through the trees of the 
two adjoining gardens, when she had happened to wake in the 

night-“Then that was his light!” thought she. “I 

might see him I I will see him.” 

“Monsieur de Grancey, is the chapter’s lawsuit quite 
settled? ” asked Rosalie point-blank of the vicar-general, dur¬ 
ing a moment of silence. 

Madame de Watteville exchanged rapid glances with the 
vicar-general. 

“ What can that matter to you, my dear child?” she said 
to Rosalie, with an affected sweetness which made her daughter 
cautious for the rest of her days. 

“It might be carried to the Court of Appeal, but our 
adversaries will think twice about that,” replied the abb6. 

“ I never could have believed that Rosalie would think 
20 



A L BER r SA VA R ON. 


ao6' 

about a lawsuit all through a dinner,” remarked Madame de 
Watteville. 

“Nor I either,” said Rosalie, in a dreamy way that made 
every one laugh. “But Monsieur de Grancey was so full of 
it that I was interested.” 

The company rose from table and returned to the drawing¬ 
room. All through the evening Rosalie listened in case 
Albert Savaron should be mentioned again; but beyond the 
congratutations offered by each newcomer to the abbe on 
having gained his suit, to which no one added any praise of 
the advocate, no more was said about it. Mademoiselle de 
Watteville impatiently looked forward to bedtime. She had 
promised herself to wake at between two and three in the 
morning, and to look at Albert’s dressing-room windows. 
When the hour came, she felt much pleasure in gazing at the 
glimmer from the lawyer’s candles that shone through the 
trees, now almost bare of their leaves. By the help of the 
strong sight of a young girl, which curiosity seems to make 
longer, she saw Albert writing, and fancied she could distin¬ 
guish the color of the furniture, which she thought was red. 
From the chimney above the roof rose a thick column of 
smoke. 

“ While all the world is sleeping, he is awake—like God ! ” 
thought she. 

The education of girls brings with it such serious problems 
—for the future of a nation is in the mother—that the Uni¬ 
versity of France long since set itself the task of having noth¬ 
ing to do with it. Here is one of these problems: Ought 
girls to be informed on all points? Ought their minds to be 
under restraint? It need not be said that the religious system 
is one of restraint. If you enlighten them, you make them 
demons before their time ; if you keep them from thinking, 
you end in the sudden explosion so well shown by Moliere in 
the character of Agnes, and you leave this suppressed mind, so 
fresh and clear-seeing, as swift and as logical as that of a sav- 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


307 


age, at the mercy of an accident. This inevitable crisis was 
brought on in Mademoiselle de Watteville by the portrait 
which one of the most prudent abbes of the Chapter of 
Besan^on imprudently allowed himself to sketch at a dinner 
party. 

Next morning, Mademoiselle de Watteville, while dressing, 
necessarily looked out at Albert Savaron walking in the garden 
adjoining that of the Hotel de Rupt. 

“What would have become of me,” thought she, “if he 
had lived anywhere else ? Here I can, at any rate, see him. 
What is he thinking about?” 

Having seen this extraordinary man, though at a distance, 
the only man whose countenance stood forth in contrast with 
crowds of Besangon faces she had hitherto met wdth, Rosalie 
at once jumped at the idea of getting into his home, of ascer¬ 
taining the reasons of so much mystery, of hearing that elo¬ 
quent voice, of winning a glance from those fine eyes. All 
this she set her heart on, but how could she achieve it ? 

All that day she drew her needle through her embroidery 
with the obtuse concentration of a girl who, like Agnes, seems 
to be thinking of nothing, but who is reflecting on things in 
general so deeply that her artifice is unfailing. As a result of 
this profound meditation, Rosalie thought she would go to 
confession. Next morning, after mass, she had a brief inter¬ 
view with the Abbe Giroud at Saint-Pierre, and managed 
so ingeniously that the hour for her confession was fixed for 
Sunday morning at half-past seven, before eight o’clock mass. 
She committed herself to a dozen fibs in order to find herself, 
just for once, in the church at the hour when the lawyer came 
to mass. Then she was seized with an impulse of extreme 
affection for her father ; she went to see him in his workroom, 
and asked him for all sorts of information on the art of turn¬ 
ing, ending by advising him to turn larger pieces, columns. 
After persuading her father to set to work on some twisted 
pillars, one of the difficulties of the turner’s art, she suggested 


ALBERT SA VAR ON. 


that he should make use of a large heap of stones that lay in the 
middle of the garden to construct a sort of grotto on which he 
might erect a little temple or Belvedere in which his twisted 
pillars could be used and shown off to all the world. 

At the climax of the pleasure the poor unoccupied man 
derived from this scheme, Rosalie said, as she kissed him, 

Above all, do not tell mamma who gave you the notion; 
she would scold me.” 

*‘Do not be afraid I ” replied Monsieur de Watteville, who 
groaned as bitterly as his daughter under the tyranny of the 
terrible descendant of the Rupts. 

So Rosalie had a certain prospect of seeing ere long a 
charming observatory built, whence her eyes would command 
the lawyer’s private room. And there are men for whose 
sake young girls can carry out such master-strokes of di¬ 
plomacy, while, for the most part, like Albert Savaron, 
they know it not. 

The Sunday so impatiently looked for arrived, and Rosalie 
dressed with such carefulness as made Mariette, the ladies’ 
maid, smile. 

‘‘It is the first time I ever knew mademoiselle to be so 
fidgety,” said Mariette. 

“It strikes me,” said Rosalie, with a glance at Mariette, 
which brought poppies to her cheeks, “ that you too are more 
particular on some days than on others.” 

As she went down the steps, across the courtyard, and 
through the gates, Rosalie’s heart beat, as everybody’s does 
in anticipation of a great event. Hitherto she had never 
known what it was to walk in the streets; for a moment she 
had felt as though her mother must read her schemes on her 
brow, and forbid her going to confession, and she now felt 
new blood in her feet, she lifted them as though she trod on 
fire. She had, of course, arranged to be with her confessor 
at a quarter-past eight, telling her mother eight, so as to have 
about a quarter of an hour near Albert, She got to church 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


309 


before mass, and after a short prayer, went to see if the Abb6 
Giroud were in his confessional, simply to pass the time; and 
she thus placed herself in such a way as to see Albert as he 
came into church. 

The man must have been atrociously ugly who did not 
seem handsome to Mademoiselle de Watteville in the frame 
of mind produced by her curiosity. And Albert Savaron, 
who was really very striking, made all the more impression 
on Rosalie because his mien, his walk, his carriage, everything 
down to his clothing, had the indescribable stamp which can 
only be expressed by the word mystery. 

He came in. The church, till now gloomy, seemed to 
Rosalie to be illuminated. The girl was fascinated by his 
slow and solemn demeanor, as of a man who bears a world 
on his shoulders, and whose deep gaze, whose very gestures, 
combine to express a devastating or absorbing thought. Ro¬ 
salie now understood the vicar-general’s words in their fullest 
extent. Yes, those eyes of tawny brown, shot with golden 
lights, covered an ardor which revealed itself in sudden flashes. 
Rosalie, with a recklessness which Mariette noted, stood in 
the lawyer’s way, so as to exchange glances with him; and 
this glance turned her blood, for it seethed and boiled as 
though its warmth were doubled. 

As soon as Albert had taken a seat. Mademoiselle de Watte¬ 
ville quickly found a place whence she could see him perfectly 
during all the time the abbe might leave her. When Mariette 
said “Here is Monsieur Giroud,” it seemed to Rosalie that 
the interval had lasted no more tlian a few minutes. By 
the time she came out from the confessional, mass was over. 
Albert had left the church. 

“The vicar-general was right,” thought she. He is 
unhappy. Why should this eagle—for he has the eyes of an 
eagle—swoop down on Besangon ? Oh ! I must know every¬ 
thing ! But how?” 

Under the smart of this new desire Rosalie set the stitches 
X 


310 


ALBERT SAVA RON, 


of her worsted-work with exquisite precision, and hid her 
meditations under a little innocent air, which shammed sim¬ 
plicity to deceive Madame de Watteville. 

From that Sunday, when Mademoiselle de Watteville had 
met that look, or, if you please, received this baptism of fire— 
a fine expression of Napoleon’s which may be well applied to 
love—she eagerly promoted the plan for the Belvedere. 

“Mamma,” said she one day when two columns were 
turned, “ my father has taken a singular idea into his head \ 
he is turning columns for a Belvedere he intends to erect on 
the heap of stones in the middle of the garden. Do you 

approve of it ? It seems to me-” 

“ I approve of everything your father does,” said Madame 
de Watteville drily, “ and it is a wife’s duty to submit to her 
husband even if she does not approve of his ideas. Why 
should I object to a thing which is of no importance in itself, 
if it only amuses Monsieur de Watteville ? ” 

“Well, because from thence we shall see into Monsieur de 
Soulas’ rooms, and Monsieur de Soulas will see us when we are 

there. Perhaps remarks may be made-” 

“ Do you presume, Rosalie, to guide your parents, and 
think you know more than they do of life and the pro¬ 
prieties?” 

“I say no more, mamma. Besides, my father said that 
there would be a room in the grotto, where it would be cool, 
and where we can take coffee.” 

“ Your father has had an excellent idea,” said Madame de 
Watteville, who forthwith went to look at the columns. 

She gave her entire approbation to the Baron de Watteville’s 
design, while choosing for the erection of this monument a 
spot at the bottom of the garden, which could not be seen 
from Monsieur de Soulas’ windows, but whence they could 
perfectly see into Albert Savaron’s rooms. A builder was 
sent for, who undertook to construct a grotto, of which the 
top should be reached by a path three feet wide through the 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


311 


rock-work, where periwinkles would grow, iris, clematis, ivy, 
honeysuckle, and Virginia creeper. The Baroness desired that 
the inside should be lined with rustic woodwork, such as was 
then the fashion for flower-stands, with a looking-glass against 
the wall, an ottoman forming a box, and a table of inlaid bark. 
Monsieur de Soulas proposed that the floor should be of 
asphalt. Rosalie suggested a hanging chandelier of rustic 
wood. 

“ The Wattevilles are having something charming done in 
their garden,” was rumored in Besangon. 

‘‘ They are rich, and can afford a thousand crowns for a 
whim-” 

‘‘A thousand crowns!” exclaimed Madame de Chavon- 
court. 

“ Yes, a thousand crowns,” cried young Monsieur de Soulas. 

A. man has been sent for from Paris to rusticate the interior, 
but it will be very pretty. Monsieur de Watteville himself is 
making the chandelier, and has begun to carve the wood.” 

Berquet is to make a cellar under it,” said an abb6. 

No,” replied young Monsieur de Soulas, “he is raising 
the kiosk on a concrete foundation, that it may not be 
damp.” 

“ You know the very least things that are done in that 
house,” said Madame de Chavoncourt sourly, as she looked at 
one of her great girls waiting to be married for a year past. 

Mademoiselle de Watteville, with a little flush of pride in 
thinking of the success of her Belvedere, discerned in herself 
a vast superiority over every one about her. No one guessed 
that a'little girl, supposed to be a witless goose, had simply 
made up her mind to get a closer view of the lawyer Savaron’s 
private study. 

Albert Savaron’s brilliant defense of the Cathedral Chapter 
was all the sooner forgotten because the envy of other lawyers 
was aroused. Also, Savaron, faithful to his seclusion, went 
nowhere, Having no friends to cry him up, and seeing no 


312 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


one, he increased the chances of being forgotten which are 
common to strangers in such a town as Besangon. Neverthe¬ 
less, he pleaded three times at the commercial tribunal in 
three knotty cases which had to be carried to the superior 
court. He thus gained as clients four of the chief merchants 
of the place, who discerned in him so much good sense and 
sound legal discernment that they placed their claims in his 
hands. 

On the day when the Watteville family inaugurated the 
Belvedere, Savaron also was founding a monument. Thanks 
to the connections he had obscurely formed among the upper 
class of merchants in Besangon, he was starting a fortnightly 
paper, called the Eastern Review, with the help of forty 
shares of five hundred francs each, taken up by his ten first 
clients, on whom he had impressed the necessity for promo¬ 
ting the interests of Besangon, the town where the traffic 
should meet between Mulhouse and Lyons, and the chief 
centre between Mulhouse and the Rhone. 

To compete with Strasbourg, was it not needful that Besan- 
9011 should become a focus of enlightenment as well as of 
trade? The leading questions relating to the interests of 
Eastern France could only be dealt with in a review. What 
a glorious task to rob Strasbourg and Dijon of their literary 
importance, to bring light to the East of France, and compete 
with the centralizing influence of Paris! These reflections, 
put forward- by Albert, were repeated by the ten merchants, 
who believed them to be their own. 

Monsieur Savaron did not commit the blunder of putting his 
name in front; he left the finances of the concern to his chief 
client. Monsieur Boucher, connected by marriage with one of 
the great publishers of important ecclesiastical works ; but he 
kept the editorship, with a share of the profits as founder. 
The commercial interest appealed to Dole, to Dijon, to 
Salins, to Neufchatel, to the Jura, Bourg, Nantua, Lous-le- 
Saulnier. The concurrence was invited of the learning and 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


313 


energy of every scientific student in the districts of le Bugey, 
la Bresse, and Franche Comte. By the influence of com¬ 
mercial interests and common feeling, five hundred sub¬ 
scribers were booked in consideration of the low price : the 
Review cost eight francs a quarter. 

To avoid hurting the conceit of the provincials by refusing 
their articles, the lawyer hit on the good idea of suggesting a 
desire for the literary management of this Review to Monsieur 
Boucher’s eldest son, a young man of two-and-twenty, very 
eager for fame, to whom the snares and woes of literary 
responsibilities were utterly unknown. Albert quietly kept 
the upper hand, and made Alfred Boucher his devoted 
adherent. Alfred was the only man in Besangon with whom 
the king of the bar was on familiar terms. Alfred came in the 
morning to discuss the articles for the next number with 
Albert in the garden. It is needless to say that the trial num¬ 
ber contained a Meditation ” by Alfred, which Savaron 
approved. In his conversations with Alfred, Albert would 
let drop some great ideas, subjects for articles of which 
Alfred availed himself. And thus the merchant’s son fancied 
he was making capital out of the great man. To Alfred, 
Albert was a man of genius, of profound politics. The com¬ 
mercial world, enchanted at the success of the Review^ had to 
pay up only three-tenths of their shares. Two hundred more 
subscribers, and the periodical would pay a dividend to the 
shareholders of five per cent., the editor remaining unpaid. 
This editing, indeed, was beyond price. 

After the third number the Review was recognized for ex¬ 
change by all the papers published in France, which Albert 
henceforth read at home. This third number included a tale 
signed ‘‘A. S.,” and attributed to the famous lawyer. In 
spite of the small attention paid by the higher circle of 
Besan^on to the Review^ which was accused of liberal views, 
this, the first novel produced in the county, came under dis¬ 
cussion that mid-winter at Madame de Chavoncourt’s. 


314 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


‘‘Papa,” said Rosalie, d. Review is published in Besan- 
9on ; you ought to take it in; and keep it in your room, 
for mamma would not let me read it, but you will lend it to 
me. 

Monsieur de Watteville, eager to obey his dear Rosalie, 
who for the last five months had given him so many proofs 
of filial affection—Monsieur de Watteville went in person 
to subscribe for a year to the Eastern Review and loaned 
the four numbers already out to his daughter. In the course 
of the night Rosalie devoured the tale—the first she had ever 
read in her life—but she had only known life for two months 
past. Hence the effect produced on her by this work must 
not be judged by ordinary rules. Without prejudice of any 
kind as to the greater or less merit of this composition from 
the pen of a Parisian who had thus imported into the province 
the manner, the brilliancy, if you will, of the new literary 
school, it could not fail to be a masterpiece to a young girl 
abandoning all her intelligence and her innocent heart to her 
first reading of this kind. 

Also, from what she had heard said, Rosalie had by intuition 
conceived a notion of it which strangely enhanced the interest 
of this novel. She hoped to find in it the sentiments, and 
perhaps something of the life of Albert. From the first pages 
this opinion took so strong a hold on her, that, after reading 
the fragment to the end, she was certain that it was no mistake. 
Here, then, is this confession, in which, according to the 
critics of Madame de Chavoncourt’s drawing-room, Albert 
had imitated some modern writers, who, for lack of inventive¬ 
ness, relate their private joys, their private griefs, or the mys¬ 
terious events of their own life: 


Ambition for Love’s Sake. 

In 1823 two young men, having agreed as a plan for a holi¬ 
day to make a tour through Switzerland, set out from Lucerne 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


315 


one fine morning in the month of July in a boat pulled by 
three oarsmen. They started for Fluelen, intending to stop 
at every notable spot on the lake of the four cantons. The 
views which shut in the waters on the way from Lucerne to 
Fluelen offer every combination that the most exacting fancy 
can demand of mountains and rivers, lakes and rocks, brooks, 
and pastures, trees, and torrents. Here are austere solitudes 
and charming headlands, smiling and trimly kept meadows, 
forests crowning perpendicular granite cliffs like plumes, 
deserted but verdant reaches opening out, and valleys whose 
beauty seems the lovelier in the dreamy distance. 

As they passed the pretty hamlet of Gersau, one of the 
friends looked for a long time at a wooden house which seemed 
to have been recently built, enclosed by a paling, and stand¬ 
ing on a promontory, almost bathed by the waters. As the boat 
rowed past, sl woman’s head was raised against the background 
of the room on the upper story of this house, to admire the 
effect of the boat on the lake. One of the young men met 
the glance thus indifferently given by the unknown fair one. 

“ Let us stop here,” said he to his friend. ^^We meant to 
make Lucerne our headquarters for seeing Switzerland ; you 
will not take it amiss, Leopold, if I change my mind and stay 
here to take charge of our possessions. Then you can go 
where you please; my journey is ended. Pull to land, men, 
and put us out at this village; we will breakfast here. I will 
go back to Lucerne to fetch all our luggage, and before you 
leave you will know in which house I take a lodging, where 
you will find me on your return.” 

‘‘Here or at Lucerne,” replied Leopold, “the difference 
is not so great that I need hinder you from following your 
whim.” 

These two youths were friends in the truest sense of the 
word. They were of the same age; they had learned at the 
same school; and after studying the law, they were spending 
their holiday in the classical tour in Switzerland. Leopold, 


316 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


by his father’s determination, was already pledged to a place 
in a notary’s office in Paris. His spirit of rectitude, his gen¬ 
tleness, and the coolness of his senses and his brain, guaran¬ 
teed him to be a docile pupil. Leopold could see himself a 
notary in Paris: his life lay before him like one of the high¬ 
roads that cross the plains of France, and he looked along its 
whole length with philosophical resignation. 

The character of his companion, whom we will call Ro- 
dolphe, presented a strong contrast with Leopold’s, and their 
antagonism had no doubt had the result of tightening the 
bond that united them. Rodolphe was the natural son of a 
man of rank, who was carried off by a premature death before 
he could make any arrangements for securing the means of 
existence to a woman he fondly loved and to Rodolphe, 
Thus cheated by a stroke of fate, Rodolphe’s mother had re¬ 
course to a heroic measure. She sold everything she owed to 
the munificence of her child’s father for a sum of more than 
a hundred thousand francs, bought with it a life annuity for 
herself at a high rate, and thus acquired an income of about 
fifteen thousand francs, resolving to devote the whole of it to 
the education of her son, so as to give him all the personal 
advantages that might help to make his fortune, while saving, 
by strict economy, a small capital to be his when he came of 
age. It was bold ; it was counting on her own life; but with¬ 
out this boldness the good mother would certainly have found 
it impossible to live and to bring her child up suitably, and 
he was her only hope, her future, the spring of all her joys. 

Rodolphe, the son of a most charming Parisian woman, 
and a man of mark, a nobleman of Brabant, was cursed with 
extreme sensitiveness. From his infancy he had in every¬ 
thing shown a most ardent nature. In him mere desire be¬ 
came a guiding force and the motive power of his whole being, 
the stimulus to his imagination, the reason of his actions. 
Notwithstanding the pains taken by a clever mother, who 
was alarmed when she detected this predisposition, Rodolphe 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


317 


Vished for things as a poet imagines, as a mathematician cal¬ 
culates, as a painter sketches, as a musician creates melodies. 
Tender-hearted, like his mother, he dashed with inconceivable 
violence and impetus of thought after the object of his desires; 
he annihilated time. While dreaming of the fulfillment of 
his schemes, he always overlooked the means of attainment. 

When my son has children,” said his mother, “he will 
want them born grown up.” 

This fine frenzy, carefully directed, enabled Rodolphe to 
achieve his studies with brilliant results, and to become what 
the English call an accomplished gentleman. His mother 
was then proud of him, though still fearing a catastrophe if 
ever a passion should possess a heart at once so tender and so 
susceptible, so vehement and so kind. Therefore, the judi¬ 
cious mother had encouraged the friendship which bound 
Leopold to Rodolphe and Rodolphe to Leopold, since she 
saw in the cold and faithful young notary a guardian, a com¬ 
rade, who might to a certain extent take her place if by some 
misfortune she should be lost to her son. Rodolphe’s mother, 
still handsome at three-and-forty, had inspired Leopold with 
an ardent passion. This circumstance made the two young 
men even more intimate. 

So Leopold, knowing Rodolphe well, was not surprised to 
find him stopping at a village and giving up the projected 
journey to Saint-Gothard, on the strength of a single glance 
at the upper window of a house. While breakfast was pre¬ 
pared for them at the Swan Inn, the friends walked round the 
hamlet and came to the neighborhood of the pretty new house; 
here, while gazing about him and talking to the Inhabitants, 
Rodolphe discovered the residence of some decent folk, who 
were willing to take him as a boarder, a very frequent custom 
in Switzerland. They offered him a bedroom looking over 
the lake and the mountains, and whence he had a view of one 
of those immense sweeping reaches which, in this lake, are 
the admiration of every traveler. This house was divided by 


318 


ALBERT SAFA RON. 


a roadway and a little creek from the new house, where Ro- 
dolphe had caught sight of the unknown fair one’s face. 

For a hundred francs a month Rodolphe was relieved of all 
thought for the necessaries of life. But, in consideration of 
the outlay the Stopfer couple expected to make, they bar¬ 
gained for three months’ residence and a month’s payment in 
advance. Rub a Swiss ever so little, and you find the usurer. 
After breakfast, Rodolphe at once made himself at home by 
depositing in his room such property as he had brought with 
him for the journey to the Saint-Gothard, and he watched 
Leopold as he set out, moved by the spirit of routine, to carry 
out the excursion for himself and his friend. When Rodolphe, 
sitting on a fallen rock on the shore, could no longer see 
Leopold’s boat, he turned to examine the new house with 
stolen glances, hoping to see the fair unknown. Alas ! he 
went in without its having given a sign of life. During din¬ 
ner, in the company of Monsieur and Madame Stopfer, 
retired coopers from Neufchatel, he questioned them as to 
the neighborhood, and ended by learning all he wanted to 
know about the lady, thanks to his hosts’ loquacity; for they 
were ready to pour out their budget of gossip without any 
pressing. 

The fair stranger’s name was Fanny Lovelace. This name 
(pronounced Loveless) is that of an old English family, but 
Richardson has given it to a creation whose fame eclipses all 
others ! Miss Lovelace had come to settle by the lake for 
her father’s health, the physicians having recommended him 
the air of Lucerne. These two English people had arrived 
with no other servant than a little girl of fourteen, a dumb 
child, much attached to Miss Fanny, on whom she waited 
very intelligently, and had settled, two winters since, with 
Monsieur and Madame Bergmann, the retired head-gardeners 
of his excellency Count Borromeo of Isola Bella and Isola 
Madre in the Lago Maggiore. These Swiss, who were pos¬ 
sessed of an income of about a thousand crowns a year, had 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


319 


let the top story of their house to the Lovelaces for three 
years, at a rent of two hundred francs a year. Old Lovelace, 
a man of ninety, and much broken, was too poor to allow 
himself any gratifications, and very rarely went out; his 
daughter worked to maintain him, translating English books, 
and writing some herself, it was said. The Lovelaces could 
not afford to hire boats to row on the lake, or horses and 
guides to explore the neighborhood. 

Poverty demanding such privation as this excites all the 
greater compassion among the Swiss, because it deprives them 
of a chance of profit. The cook of the establishment fed 
the three English boarders for a hundred francs a month 
inclusive. In Gersau it was generally believed, however, that 
the gardener and his wife, in spite of their pretensions, used 
the cook’s name as a screen to net the little profits of this 
bargain. The Bergmanns had made beautiful gardens round 
their house, and had built a hothouse. The flowers, the 
fruit, and the botanical rarities of this spot were what had 
induced the young lady to settle on it as she passed through 
Gersau. Miss Fanny was said to be nineteen years old ; she 
was the old man’s youngest child, and the object of his adula^ 
tion. About two months prior she had hired a piano from 
Lucerne, for she seemed to be crazy about music, his hosts 
informed him. 

^‘She loves flowers and music, and she is unmarried!” 
thought Rodolphe ; what good luck ! ” 

The next day Rodolphe went to ask leave to visit the hot¬ 
houses and gardens, which were beginning to be somewhat 
famous. The permission was not immediately granted. The 
retired gardeners asked, strangely enough, to see Rodolphe’s 
passport; it was sent to them at once. The paper was not re¬ 
turned to him till next morning, by the hands of the cook, 
who expressed her master’s pleasure in showing him their 
place. Rodolphe went to the Bergmanns, not without a cer¬ 
tain trepidation, known only to persons of strong feelings, 


320 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


who go through as much passion in a moment as some men 
experience in a whole lifetime. 

After dressing himself carefully to gratify the old gardeners 
of the Borromean Islands, whom he regarded as the warders 
of his treasure, he went all over the grounds, looking at the 
house now and again, but with much caution ; the old couple 
treated him with evident distrust. But his attention was soon 
attracted by the little English deaf-mute, in whom his discern¬ 
ment, though young as yet, enabled him to recognize a girl 
of African, or at least of Sicilian origin. The child had the 
golden-brown color of a Havana cigar, eyes of fire, Armenian 
eyelids with lashes of very un-British length, hair blacker than 
black; and under this almost olive skin, sinews of extraordi¬ 
nary strength and feverish alertness. She looked at Rodolphe 
with amazing curiosity and effrontery, watching his every 
movement. 

‘‘To whom does that little Moresco belong?” he asked 
worthy Madame Bergmann. 

“ To the English,” Monsieur Bergmann replied. 

“ But she never was born in England ! ” 

“ They may have, perhaps, brought her from the Indies,” 
said Madame Bergmann. 

“I have been told that Miss Lovelace is fond of music. I 
should be delighted if, during the residence by the lake to 
which I am condemned by my doctor’s orders, she would 
allow me to join her.” 

“They receive no one, and will not see anybody,” said the 
old gardener. 

Rodolphe bit his lips and went away, without having been 
invited into the house, or taken into the part of the garden 
that lay between the front of the house and the shore of the 
little promontory. On that side the house had a balcony 
above the first floor, made of wood, and covered by the roof, 
which projected deeply like the roof of a chalet on all four 
sides_^_of the building, in the Swiss fashion. Rodolphe had 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


321 


loudly praised the elegance of this arrangement, and talked 
of the view from that balcony, but all in vain. When he had 
taken leave of the Bergmanns it struck him that he was a 
simpleton, like any man of spirit and imagination disappointed 
of the result of a plan which he had believed would succeed. 

In the evening he, of course, went out in a boat on the 
lake, round and about the spit of land, to Brunnen and to 
Schwytz, and came in at nightfall. From afar he saw the 
window open and brightly lighted; he heard the sound of a 
piano and the tones of an exquisite voice. He made the 
boatmen stop, and gave himself up to the pleasure of listening 
to an Italian air delightfully sung. When the singing ceased, 
Rodolphe landed and sent away the boat and rowers. At the 
cost of wetting his feet, he went to sit down under the water- 
worn granite shelf crowned by a thick hedge of thorny acacia, 
by the side of which ran a long lime avenue in the Berg¬ 
manns’ garden. By the end of an hour he heard steps and 
voices just above him, but the words that reached his ears 
were all Italian, and spoken by two women. 

He took advantage of the moment when the two speakers 
were at one end of the walk to slip noiselessly to the other. 
After half an hour of struggling he got to the end of the 
avenue, and there took up a position whence, without being 
seen or heard, he could watch the two women without being 
observed by them as they came towards him. What was Ro- 
dolphe’s amazement on recognizing the deaf-mute as one of 
them ; she was talking to Miss Lovelace in Italian. 

It was now eleven o’clock at night. The stillness was so 
perfect on the lake and around the dwelling that the two 
women must have thought themselves safe ; in all Gersau 
there could be no eyes open but theirs. Rodolphe supposed 
that the girl’s dumbness must be a necessary deception. 
From the way in which they both spoke Italian, Rodolphe 
suspected that it was the mother tongue of both girls, and 
concluded that the English name also hid some disguise. 

21 


322 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


‘‘They are Italian refugees,” said he to himself, “ outlaws 
in fear of the Austrian or Sardinian police. The young lady 
waits till it is dark to walk and talk in security.” 

He lay down by the side of the hedge, and crawled like a 
snake to find a way between two acacia shrubs. At the risk 
of leaving his coat behind him, or tearing deep scratches in 
his back, he got through the hedge when the so-called Miss 
Fanny and her pretended deaf-and-dumb maid were at the 
other end of the path; then, when they had come within 
twenty yards of him without seeing him, for he was in the 
shadow of the hedge, and the moon was shining brightly, he 
suddenly rose. 

“ Fear nothing,” said he in French to the Italian girl, “ I 
am not a spy. You are refugees, I have guessed that. I am 
a Frenchman whom one look from you has fixed at Gersau.” 

Rodolphe, startled by the acute pain caused by some steel 
instrument piercing his side, fell like a log. 

“ Nel lago con pieira ” said the terrible dumb girl. 

“ Oh, Gina! ” exclaimed the Italian. 

“She has missed me,” said Rodolphe, pulling from the 
wound a stiletto, which had been turned by one of the false 
ribs. “ But a little higher up it would have been deep in my 
heart. I was wrong, Francesca,” he went on, remembering 
the name he had heard little Gina repeat several times; “ I 
owe her no grudge, do not scold her. The happiness of 
speaking to you is well worth the prick of a stiletto. Only 
show me the way out; I must get back to the Stopfers’ house. 
Be easy; I shall tell nothing.” 

Francesca, recovering from her astonishment, helped Ro¬ 
dolphe to rise, and said a few words to Gina, whose eyes filled 
with tears. The two girls made him sit down on a bench and 
take off his coat, his waistcoat, and his cravat. Then Gina 
opened his shirt and sucked the wound strongly. Francesca, 
who had left them, returned with a large piece of sticking- 
plaster, which she applied to the wound. 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


323 


‘‘You can walk now as far as your house,” she said. 

Each took an arm, and Rodolphe was conducted to a side 
gate, of which the key was in Francesca’s apron pocket. 

“ Does Gina speak French ? ” said Rodolphe to Francesca. 

“No. But do not excite yourself,” replied Francesca with 
some impatience. 

“Let me look at you,” said Rodolphe pathetically, “for it 
may be long before I am able to come again-” 

He leaned against one of the gate-posts contemplating the 
beautiful Italian, who allowed him to gaze at her for a moment 
under the sweetest silence and the sweetest night that ever, 
perhaps, shone on this lake, the king of these beautiful Swiss 
lakes. 

Francesca was quite of the classic Italian type, and such as 
imagination supposes or pictures, or, if you will, dreams, that 
Italian women are. What first struck Rodolphe was the grace 
and elegance of a figure evidently powerful, though so slender 
as to appear fragile. An amber paleness overspread her face, 
betraying sudden interest, but it did not dim the voluptuous 
glance of her liquid eyes of velvety blackness. A pair of 
hands as beautiful as ever a Greek sculptor added to the 
polished arms of a statue grasped Rodolphe’s arm, and their 
whiteness gleamed against his black coat. The rash French¬ 
man could but just discern the long, oval shape of her face, 
and a melancholy mouth showing brilliant teeth between the 
parted lips, full, fresh, and brightly red. The exquisite lines 
of this face guaranteed to Francesca permanent beauty; but 
what most struck Rodolphe was the adorable freedom, the 
Italian frankness of this woman, wholly absorbed as she was 
in her pity for him. 

Francesca said a word to Gina, who gave Rodolphe her arm 
as far as the Stopfers’ door, and fled like a swallow as soon as 
she had rung. 

“ These patriots do not play at killing! ” said Rodolphe to 
himself as he felt his sufferings when he found himself in his 



S24 


ALBERT SAFA ROM 


bed. ‘ Nel lago ! ’ Gina would have pitched me into th6 
lake with a stone tied to my neck.” 

Next day he sent to Lucerne for the best surgeon there, and 
when the surgeon came, enjoined on him absolute secrecy, 
giving him to understand that his honor strictly depended on 
such observance. 

Leopold returned from his excursion on the day when his 
friend first got out of bed. Rodolphe made up a story, and 
begged him to go to Lucerne to fetch their luggage and letters. 
Leopold brought back the most fatal, the most dreadful 
news : Rodolphe’s mother was dead. While the two friends 
were on their way from Bdle to Lucerne, the fatal letter, 
written by Leopold’s father, had reached Lucerne the day 
they left for Fluelen. 

In spite of Leopold’s utmost precautions, Rodolphe fell ill 
of a nervous fever. As soon as Leopold saw his friend out 
of danger, he set out for France with a power of attorney, 
and Rodolphe could thus remain at Gersau, the only place in 
the world where his grief could grow calmer. The young 
Frenchman’s position, his despair, the circumstances which 
made such a loss worse for him than for any other man, were 
known, and secured him the pity and interest of every one at 
Gersau. Every morning the pretended dumb girl came to 
see him and bring him news of her mistress. 

As soon as Rodolphe could go out he went to the Berg- 
manns’ house, to thank Miss Fanny Lovelace and her father 
for the interest they had taken in his sorrow and his illness. 
For the first time since he had lodged with the Bergmanns the 
old Italian admitted a stranger to his room, where Rodolphe 
was received with the cordiality due to his misfortunes and to 
his being a Frenchman, which excluded all distrust of him. 
Francesca looked so lovely by candlelight that first evening 
that she shed a ray of brightness on his grieving heart. Her 
smiles flung the roses of hope on his woe. She sang, not 
indeed gay songs, but grave and solemn melodies suited to 


ALBERT SAVAROM 


325 


the state of Rodolphe’s heart, and he observed this touching 
care. 

At about eight o’clock the old man left the young people 
without any sign of uneasiness, and went to his room. When 
Francesca was tired of singing, she led Rodolphe on to the 
balcony, whence they perceived the sublime scenery of the 
lake, and signed to him to be seated by her on a rustic 
wooden bench. 

*‘Am I very indiscreet in asking how old you are, cara 
Francesca?” said Rodolphe. 

‘‘Nineteen,” said she, “well past.” 

“If anything in the world could soothe my sorrow,” he 
went on, “it would be the hope of winning you from your 
father, whatever your fortune may be. So beautiful as you 
are, you seem to me richer than a prince’s daughter. And I 
tremble as I confess to you the feelings with which you have 
inspired me; but they are deep—they are eternal.” 

“ Zitto said Francesca, laying a finger of her right hand 
on her lips. “ Say no more; I am not free. I have been 
married these three years.” 

For a few minutes utter silence reigned. When the Italian 
girl, alarmed at Rodolphe’s stillness, went close to him, she 
found that he had fainted. 

“ Povero / ” she said to herself. “And I thought him cold.” 

She fetched some salts, and revived Rodolphe by making 
him smell at them. 

“ Married ! ” said Rodolphe, looking at Francesca. And 
then his tears flowed freely. 

“ Child ! ” said she. “ But there still is hope. My hus¬ 
band is-” 

“ Eighty?” Rodolphe put in. 

“ No,” said she with a smile, “but sixty-five. He has dis¬ 
guised himself as much older to mislead the police.” 

“Dearest,” said Rodolphe, “a few more shocks of this 
kind and I shall die. Only when you have known me 



326 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


twenty years will you understand the strength and power of 
my heart, and the nature of its aspirations for happiness. 
This plant,” he went on, pointing to the yellow jasmine 
which covered the balustrade, “ does not climb more eagerly 
to spread itself in the sunbeams than I have clung to you for 
this month past. I love you passionately. That love will be 
the secret fount of my life—I may possibly die of it.” 

“Oh! Frenchman, Frenchman!” said she, emphasizing 
her exclamation with a little incredulous grimace. 

“ Shall I not be forced to wait, to accept you at the hands 
of time?” said he gravely. “ But know this; if you are in 
earnest in what you have allowed to escape you, I will wait 
for you faithfully, without suffering any other attachment to 
grow up in my heart.” 

She looked at him doubtfully. 

“ None,” said he, “not even a passing fancy. I have my 
fortune to make ; you must have a splendid one, nature created 
you a princess-” 

At this word Francesca could not repress a faint smile, 
which gave her face the most bewitching expression, some¬ 
thing subtle, like what the great Leonardo has so well depicted 
in the Gioconda. This smile made Rodolphe pause. “ Ah, 
yes ! ” he went on, “you must suffer much from the destitu¬ 
tion to which exile has brought you. Oh, if you would make 
me happy above all men, and consecrate my love, you would 
treat me as a friend. Ought I not to be your friend ? My 
poor mother has left sixty thousand francs of savings; take 
half.” 

Francesca looked steadily at him. This piercing gaze went 
to the bottom of Rodolphe’s soul. 

“We want nothing ; my work amply supplies our luxuries,” 
she replied in a grave voice. 

“And can I endure that a Francesca should work?” cried 
he. “ One day you will return to your country and find all 
you left there.” Again the Italian girl looked at Rodolphe. 



ALBERT SA VAR OK. 


327 


“ And TOO will then repay me what you may have conde¬ 
scended to borrow,” he added, with an expression fall of 
delicate feeling. 

“ Let 03 drop this sobject,” said she, with incomparable 
dignity of gesture, expression, and attitude. “ Make a splen¬ 
did fortune, be one of the remarkable men of your country; 
that is my desire. Fame is a drawbridge which may serve to 
cross a deep gulf. Be ambitious, if you must. I believe you 
have great and powerful talents, but use them rather for the 
happiness of mankind than to deserve me; you will be all the 
greater in my eyes.” 

In the course of this conversation, which lasted two hours, 
Rodolphe discovered that Francesca was an enthusiast for 
liberal ideas, and for that worship of liberty which had led to 
the three revolutions in Naples, Piedmont, and Spain. On 
leaving, he was shown to the door by Gina, the so-called 
mute. At eleven o’clock no one was astir in the village, 
there was no fear of listeners; Rodolphe took Gina into a 
comer, and asked her in a low voice and bad Italian, “ Who 
are your master and mistress, child ? Tell me, I will give 
you this fine new gold-piece.” 

“ Monsieur,” said the girl, taking the coin, “my master is 
the famous bookseller Lamporani of Milan, one of the leaders of 
the revolution, and the conspirator of all others whom Austria 
would most like to have in the Spielberg.” 

“A bookseller’s wife ! Ah, so much the better,” thought 
he - “we are on an equal footing. And what is her family ? ” 
he added, “ for she looks like a queen.” 

“All Italian women do,” replied Gina proudly. “Her 
father’s name is Colonna.” 

Emboldened by Francesca’s modest rank, Rodolphe had an 
awning fitted to his boat and cushions in the stem. When 
this was done, the lover came to propose to Francesca to come 
out on the lake. The Italian accepted, no doubt to carry out 
her part of a young English miss in the eyes of the villagers. 



328 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


but she brought Gina with her. Francesca Colonna’s lightest 
actions betrayed a superior education and the highest social 
rank. By the way in which she took her place at the end of 
the boat Rodolphe felt himself in some sort cut off from her, 
and, in the face of a look of pride worthy of an aristocrat, 
the familiarity he had intended fell dead. By a glance Fran¬ 
cesca made herself a princess, with all the prerogatives she 
might have enjoyed in the middle ages. She seemed to have 
read the thoughts of this vassal who was so audacious as to 
constitute himself her protector. 

Already, in the furniture of the room where Francesca had 
received him, in her dress, and in the various trifles she made 
use of, Rodolphe had detected indications of a superior char¬ 
acter and a fine fortune. All these observations now recurred 
to his mind ; he became thoughtful after having been trampled 
on, as it were, by Francesca’s dignity. Gina, her half-grown-up 
confidante, also seemed to have a mocking expression as she 
gave a covert or side glance at Rodolphe. This obvious disa¬ 
greement between the Italian lady’s rank and her manners was 
a fresh puzzle to Rodolphe, who suspected some further trick 
like Gina’s assumed dumbness. 

‘‘ Where would you go. Signora Lamporani ?” he asked. 

Towards Lucerne,” replied Francesca in French. 

‘‘ Good ! ” said Rodolphe to himself, “she is not startled 
by hearing me speak her name; she had, no doubt, foreseen 
that I should ask Gina—she is so cunning. What is your 
quarrel with me ? ” he went on, going at last to sit down by 
her side, and asking her by a gesture to give him her hand, 
which she withdrew. “ You are cold and ceremonious j what, 
in colloquial language, we should call short.'' 

“ It is true,” she replied with a smile. “I am wrong. It 
is not good manners; it is vulgar. In French you would call it 
inartistic. It is better to be frank than to harbor cold or 
hostile feelings towards a friend, and you have already proved 
yourself my friend. Perhaps I have gone too far with you. 


ALBERT SAFA RON. 


329 


You must have taken me to be a very ordinary woman.” 
Rodolphe made many signs of denial. ‘‘Yes,” said the 
bookseller’s wife, going on without noticing this pantomime, 
which, however, she plainly saw. “ I have detected that, and 
naturally I have reconsidered my conduct. Well! I will put 
an end to everything by a few words of deep truth. Under¬ 
stand this, Rodolphe : I feel in myself the strength to stifle a 
feeling if it were not in harmony with my ideas or anticipation 
of what true love is. I could love—as we can love in Italy, 
but I know my duty. No intoxication can make me forget it. 
Married without my consent to that poor old man, I might take 
advantage of the liberty he so generously gives mej but three 
years of married life imply acceptance of its laws. Hence the 
most vehement passion would never make me utter, even 
involuntarily, a wish to find myself free. 

“ Emilio knows my character. He knows that without my 
heart, which is my own, and which I might give away, I 
should never allow any one to take my hand. That is why I 
have just refused it to you. I desire to be loved and waited 
for with fidelity, nobleness, ardor, while all I can give is 
infinite tenderness of which the expression may not overstep 
the boundary of the heart, the permitted neutral ground. All 
this being thoroughly understood. Oh ! ” she went on with a 
girlish gesture, “ I will be as coquettish, as gay, as glad, as a 
child who knows comparatively nothing of the dangers of 
familiarity.” 

This plain and frank declaration was made in a tone, an 
accent, and supported by a look which gave it the deepest 
stamp of truth. 

“A Princess Colonna could not have spoken better,” said 
Rodolphe, smiling. 

“Is that,” she answered with some haughtiness, “a reflec¬ 
tion on the humbleness of my birth? Must your love flaunt 
a coat-of-arms ? At Milan the noblest names are written over 
shop-doors: Sforza, Canova, Visconti, Trivulzio, Ursini; 


330 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


there are Archintos apothecaries; but, believe me, though I 
keep a shop, I have the feelings of a duchess.” 

“ A reflection ! Nay, madame, I meant it for praise.” 

** By comparison ? ” she said archly. 

“Ah, once for all,” said he, “not to torture me if my 
words should ill express my feelings, understand that my love 
is perfect; it carries with it absolute obedience and respect.” 

She bowed as a woman satisfied, and said, “ Then monsieur 
accepts the treaty ? ” 

“Yes,” said he. “I can understand that in a rich and 
powerful feminine nature the faculty of loving ought not to be 
wasted, and that you, out of delicacy, wished to restrain it. 
Ah ! Francesca, at my age tenderness requited, and by so 
sublime, so royally beautiful a creature as you are—why, it is 
the fulfillment of all my wishes. To love you as you desire to 
be loved—is not that enough to make a young man guard 
himself against every evil folly ? Is it not to concentrate all his 
powers in a noble passion, of which in the future he may 
be proud, and which can leave none but lovely memories? 
If you could but know with what hues you have clothed the 
chain of Pilatus, the Rigi, and this superb lake-” 

“ I want to know,” said she, with the Italian artlessness 
which has always a touch of artfulness. 

“ Well, this hour will shine on all my life like a diamond 
on a queen’s brow.” 

Francesca’s only reply was to lay her hand on Rodolphe’s. 

“ Oh dearest! for ever dearest! Tell me, have you never 
loved ?” 

“ Never.” 

“And you allow me to love you nobly, looking to heaven - 
for the utmost fulfillment ? ” he asked. 

She gently bent her head. Two large tears rolled down 
Rodolphe’s cheeks. 

“Why! what is the matter?” she cried, abandoning her 
imperial manner. 


ALBERT SAVA RON'. 


331 


I have now no mother whom I can tell of my happiness; 
she left this earth without seeing what would have mitigated 
her agony-” 

“ What ? said she. 

“Her tenderness replaced by an equal tenderness-” 

Povero mto !'^ exclaimed the Italian, much touched. 
“Believe me,” she went on after a pause, “ it is a very sweet 
thing, and to a woman, a strong element of fidelity to know 
that she is all in all on earth to the man she loves; to find 
him lonely, with no family, with nothing in his heart but his 
love—in short, to have him wholly to herself.” 

When two lovers thus understand each other, the heart feels 
delicious peace, supreme tranquillity. Certainty is the basis 
for which human feelings crave, for it is never lacking to 
religious sentiment; man is always certain of being fully 
repaid by God. Love never believes itself secure but by this 
resemblance to divine love. And the raptures of that moment 
must have been fully felt to be understood; it is unique in 
life; it can never return again, alas! than the emotions of 
youth. To believe in a woman, to make her your human re¬ 
ligion, the fount of life, the secret luminary of all your least 
thoughts!—is not this a second birth ? And a young man 
mingles with this love a little of the feeling he had for his 
mother. 

Rodolphe and Francesca for some time remained in perfect 
silence, answering each other by sympathetic glances full of 
thoughts. They understood each other in the midst of one 
of the most beautiful scenes of nature, whose glories, inter¬ 
preted by the glory in their hearts, helped to stamp on their 
minds the most fugitive details of that unique hour. There 
had not been the slightest shade of frivolity in Francesca’s 
conduct. It was noble, large, and without any second thought. 
This magnanimity struck Rodolphe greatly, for in it he recog¬ 
nized the difference between the Italian and the Frenchwoman. 
The waters, the land, the sky, the woman, all were grandiose 




332 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


and suave, even their love in the midst of this picture, so vast 
in its expanse, so rich in detail, where the sternness of the 
snowy peaks and their hard folds standing clearly out against 
the blue sky reminded Rodolphe of the circumstances which 
limited his happiness: a lovely country shut in by snows. 

This delightful intoxication of soul was destined to be 
disturbed. A boat was approaching from Lucerne; Gina, 
who had been watching it attentively, gave a joyful start, 
though faithful to her part as a mute. The bark came nearer; 
when at length Francesca could distinguish the faces on board, 
she exclaimed, Tito ! ” as she perceived a young man. She 
stood up and remained standing at the risk of being drowned. 
“Tito ! Tito ! ” cried she, impulsively waving her handker¬ 
chief. 

Tito desired the boatmen to slacken, and the two boats 
pulled side by side. The Italian and Tito talked with such 
extreme rapidity, and in a dialect unfamiliar to a man who 
hardly knew even the Italian of books, that Rodolphe could 
neither hear nor guess the drift of this conversation. But 
Tito’s handsome face, Francesca’s familiarity, and Gina’s 
expression of delight, all aggrieved him. And indeed no lover 
can help being ill pleased at finding himself neglected for 
another, whoever he may be. Tito tossed a little leather bag 
to Gina, full of gold, no doubt, and a packet of letters to 
Francesca, who began to read them, with a farewell wave of 
the hand to Tito. 

“Get quickly back to Gersau,’’ she said to the boatmen. 
“ I will not let my poor Emilio pine ten minutes longer than 
he need.’’ 

“What has happened? ” asked Rodolphe, as he saw Fran¬ 
cesca finish reading the last letter. 

“Liberty ! ’’ she exclaimed, with an artist’s enthusiasm. 

“And money,’’ added Gina, like an echo, for she had 
found her tongue. 

“Yes/’ said Francesca, “no more poverty! For more 


ALBERT SAVA ROM 


333 


than eleven months have I been working, and I was beginning 
to be tired of it. I am certainly not a literary woman.” 

“ Who is this Tito? ” asked Rodolphe. 

^‘The secretary of state to the financial department of the 
humble shop of the Colonnas, in other words the son of our 
ragionato. Poor boy ! he could not come by the Saint-Goth- 
ard, nor by the Mont-Cenis, nor by the Simplon ; he came by 
sea, by Marseilles, and had to cross France. Well, in three 
weeks we shall be in Geneva, and living at our ease. Come, 
Rodolphe,” she added, seeing sadness overspread the Paris¬ 
ian’s face, is not the Lake of Geneva quite as good as the 
Lake of Lucerne?” 

^‘But allow me to bestow a regret on the Bergmanns’ de¬ 
lightful house,” said Rodolphe, pointing to the little pro¬ 
montory. 

Come and dine with us to add to your associations, povero 
miOf** said she. ‘‘This is a great day; we are out of danger. 
My mother writes that within a year there will be an amnesty. 
Oh ! la cara patria / ’ ’ 

These three words made Gina weep. “Another winter 
here,” said she, “and I should have been dead ! ” 

“ Poor little Sicilian kid ! ” said Francesca, stroking Gina's 
head with an expression and an affection which made Ro¬ 
dolphe long to be so caressed, even if it were without love. 

The boat grounded; Rodolphe sprang on to the sand, 
offered his hand to the Italian lady, escorted her to the door 
of the Bergmanns' house, and went to dress and return as soon 
as possible. 

When he joined the bookseller and his wife, who were sit¬ 
ting on the balcony, Rodolphe could scarcely repress an ex¬ 
clamation of surprise at seeing the prodigious change which 
the good news had produced in the old man. He now saw a 
man of about sixty, extremely well preserved, a lean Italian, 
as straight as an I, with hair still black though thin and show¬ 
ing a white skull, with bright eyes, a full set of white teeth, a 


334 


ALBERT SAFA ROM 


face like Caesar, and on his diplomatic lips a sardonic smile, 
the almost false smile under which a man of good breeding 
hides his real feelings. 

Here is my husband under his natural form,” said Fran¬ 
cesca gravely. 

“He is quite a new acquaintance,” replied Rodolphe, be¬ 
wildered. 

“Quite,” said the bookseller; “I have played many a 
part, and know well how to make up. Ah ! I played one in 
Paris under the Empire, with Bourrienne, Madame Murat, 
Madame d’Abrantis e tuti'e quanti. Everything we take the 
trouble to learn in our youth, even the most futile, is of use. 
If my wife had not received a man’s education—an unheard-of 
thing in Italy—I should have been obliged to chop wood to 
get my living here. Povera Francesca ! who would have told 
me that she would some day maintain me ! ” 

As he listened to this worthy bookseller, so easy, so affable, 
so hale, Rodolphe scented some mystification, and preserved 
the watchful silence of a man who has been duped. 

Che avete, signor Francesca asked with simplicity. 
“ Does our happiness sadden you ? ” 

“Your husband is a young man,” he whispered in her ear. 

She broke into such a frank, infectious laugh that Rodolphe 
was still more puzzled. 

“He is but sixty-five, at your service,” said she; “but I 
can assure you that even that is something—to be thankful 
for!” 

“ I do not like to hear you jest about an affection so sacred 
as this, of which you yourself prescribed the conditions.” 

said she, stamping her foot, and looking whether 
her husband were listening. “Never disturb the peace of 
mind of that dear man, as simple as a child, and with whom 
I can do what I please. He is under my protection,” she 
added. “ If you could know with what generosity he risked 
his life and fortune because I was a Liberal! for he does not 


ALBERT SA VARON. 


335 


share my political opinions. Is not that love, Monsieur 
Frenchman ? But they are like that in his family. Emilio’s 
younger brother was deserted for a handsome youth by the 
woman he loved. He thrust his sword through his own heart 
ten minutes after he had said to his servant, ‘ I could of course 
kill my rival, but it would grieve the Diva too deeply.’ ” 

This mixture of dignity and banter, of haughtiness and 
playfulness, made Francesca at this moment the most fascina¬ 
ting creature in the world. The dinner and the evening were 
full of cheerfulness, justified, indeed, by the relief of the two 
refugees, but depressing to Rodolphe. 

“ Can she be fickle? ” he asked himself as he returned to 
the Stopfers’ house. She sympathized in my sorrow, and I 
cannot take part in her joy ! ” 

He blamed himself, justifying this girl-wife. 

“ She has no taint of hypocrisy, and is carried away by 
impulse,” thought he, ‘‘and I want her to be like a Parisian 
woman.” 

Next day and the following days—in fact, for twenty days 
after—Rodolphe spent all his time at the Bergmanns’, watch¬ 
ing Francesca without having determined to watch her. In 
some souls admiration is not independent of a certain pene¬ 
tration. The young Frenchman discerned in Francesca the 
imprudence of girlhood, the true nature of a woman as yet 
unbroken, sometimes struggling against her love, and at other 
moments yielding and carried away by it. The old man cer¬ 
tainly behaved to her as a father to his daughter, and Fran¬ 
cesca treated him with a deeply felt gratitude which roused 
her instinctive nobleness. The situation and the woman 
were to Rodolphe an impenetrable enigma, of which the solu¬ 
tion attracted him more and more. 

These last days were full of secret joys, alternating with 
melancholy moods, with tiffs and quarrels even more delight¬ 
ful than the hours when Rodolphe and Francesca were of one 


336 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


mind. And he was more and more fascinated by this tender¬ 
ness apart from wit, always and in all things the same, an 
affection that was jealous of mere nothings—already ! 

^*You care very much for luxury?” said he one evening to 
Francesca, who was expressing her wish to get away from 
Gersau, where she missed many things. 

I! ” cried she. ‘‘ I love luxury as I love the arts, as I 
love a picture by Raphael, a fine horse, a beautiful day, or the 
Bay of Naples. Emilio,” she went on, “have I ever com¬ 
plained here during our days of privation ? ” 

“ You would not have been yourself if you had,” replied 
the old man gravely. 

“ After all, is it not in the nature of plain folks to aspire to 
grandeur?” she asked, with a mischievous glance at Ro- 
dolphe and at her husband. “Were my feet made for 
fatigue?” she added, putting out two pretty little feet. 
“ My hands ”—and she held one out to Rodolphe—“were 
those hands made to work? Leave us,” she said to her hus¬ 
band; “I want to speak to him.” 

The old man went into the drawing-room with sublime 
good faith; he was sure of his wife. 

“I will not have you come with us to Geneva,” she said to 
Rodolphe. “ It is a gossiping town. Though I am far 
above the nonsense the world talks, I do not choose to be 
calumniated, not for my own sake, but for his. I make it 
my pride to be the glory of that old man, who is, after all, 
my only protector. We are leaving; stay here a few days. 
When you come on to Geneva, call first on my husband, and 
let him introduce you to me. Let us hide our great and 
unchangeable affection from the eyes of the world. I love 
you ; you know it; but this is how I will prove it to you— 
you shall never discern in my conduct anything whatever 
that may arouse your jealousy.” 

She drew him into a corner of the balcony, kissed him on 
the forehead, and fled, leaving him in amazement. 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


337 


Next day Rodolphe heard that the lodgers at the Berg- 
manns’ had left at daybreak. It then seemed to him intoler¬ 
able to remain at Gersau, and he set out for Vevay by the 
longest route, starting sooner than was necessary. Attracted 
to the waters of the lake where the beautiful Italian awaited 
him, he reached Geneva by the end of October. To avoid 
the discomforts of the town he took rooms in a house at 
Eaux-Vives, outside the walls. As soon as he was settled, his 
first care was to ask his landlord, a retired jeweler, whether 
some Italian refugees from Milan had not lately come to 
reside at Geneva. 

Not so far as I know,” replied the man. Prince and 
Princess Colonna of Rome have taken Monsieur Jeanrenaud’s 
place for three years; it is one of the finest on the lake. It 
is situated between the Villa Diodati and that of Monsieur 
Lafin-de-Dieu, let to the Vicomtesse de Beauseant. Prince 
Colonna has come to see his daughter and his son-in-law, 
Prince Gandolphini, a Neapolitan, or if you like, a Sicilian, 
an old adherent of King Murat’s, and a victim of the last 
revolution. These are the last arrivals at Geneva, and they 
are not Milanese. Serious steps had to be taken, and the 
pope’s interest in the Colonna family was invoked, to obtain 
permission from the foreign powers and the King of Naples 
for the Prince and Princesse Gandolphini to live here. Ge¬ 
neva is anxious to do nothing to displease the Holy Alliance to 
which it owes its independence. Our part is not to ruffle for¬ 
eign courts: there are many foreigners here, Russians and 
English.” 

Even some Genevese? ” 

‘‘Yes, monsieur, our lake is so fine ! Lord Byron lived here 
about seven years at the Villa Diodati, which every one goes 
to see now, like Coppet and Ferney.” 

“You cannot tell me whether within a week or so a book¬ 
seller from Milan has come with his wife—named Lamporani, 
one of the leaders of the last revolution? ” 

22 


338 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


“ I could easily find out by going to the Foreigners’ Club,” 
said the jeweler. 

Rodolphe’s first walk was very naturally to the Villa Dio- 
dati, the residence of Lord Byron, whose recent death added 
to its attractiveness: for is not death the consecration of 
genius ? 

The road to Eaux-Vives follows the shore of the lake, and, 
like all the roads in Switzerland, is very narrow; in some 
spots, in consequence of the configuration of the hilly 
ground, there is scarcely space for two carriages to pass each 
other. 

At a few yards from the Jeanrenauds’ house, which he 
was approaching without knowing it, Rodolphe heard the 
sound of a carriage behind him, and, finding himself in a sunken 
road, he climbed to the top of a rock to leave the road free. 
Of course he looked at the approaching carriage—an elegant 
English phaeton, with a splendid pair of English horses. He 
felt quite dizzy as he beheld in this carriage Francesca, beau¬ 
tifully dressed, by the side of an old lady as hard as a cameo. 
A servant blazing with gold lace stood behind. Francesca 
recognized Rodolphe, and smiled at seeing him like a statue 
on a pedestal. The carriage, which the lover followed with 
his eyes as he climbed the hill, turned in at the gate of a 
country house, towards which he ran. 

** Who lives here? ” he asked of the gardener. 

“ Prince and Princess Colonna, and Prince and Princess 
Gandolphini.” 

“ Have they not just driven in? ” 

Yes, sir.” 

In that instant a veil fell from Rodolphe’s eyes; he saw 
clearly the meaning of the past. 

“ If only this is her last piece of trickery ! ” thought the 
thunder-stricken lover to himself. 

He trembled lest he should have been the plaything of a 
whim, for he had heard what a cafriccio might mean in an 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


339 


Italian. But what a crime had he committed in the eyes of a 
woman—in accepting a born princess as a citizen’s wife ! in 
believing that a daughter of one of the most illustrious houses 
of the middle ages was the wife of a bookseller ! The con¬ 
sciousness of his blunders increased Rodolphe’s desire to 
know whether he would be ignored and repelled. He asked 
for Prince Gandolphini, sending in his card, and was imme¬ 
diately received by the false Lamporani, who came forward 
to meet him, welcomed him with the best possible grace, and 
took him to walk on a terrace whence there was a view of 
Geneva, the Jura, the hills covered with villas, and below 
them a wide expanse of the lake. 

‘‘My wife is faithful to the lakes, you see,” he remarked, 
after pointing out the details to his visitor. “ We have a sort 
of concert this evening,” he added, as they returned to the 
splendid Villa Jeanrenaud. “ I hope you will do me and the 
Princess the pleasure of seeing you. Two months of poverty 
endured in intimacy are equal to years of friendship.” 

Though he was consumed by curiosity, Rodolphe dared not 
ask to see the Princess; he slowly made his way back to 
Eaux-Vives, looking forward to the evening. In a few hours 
his passion, great as it had already been, was augmented by 
his anxiety and by suspense as to future events. He now 
understood the necessity for making himself famous, that he 
might some day find himself, socially speaking, on a level 
with his idol. In his eyes Francesca was made really great 
by the simplicity and ease of her conduct at Gersau. Princess 
Colonna’s haughtiness, so evidently natural to her, alarmed 
Rodolphe, who would find enemies in Francesca’s father and 
mother—at least, so he might expect; and the secrecy which 
Princess Gandolphini had so strictly enjoined on him now 
struck him as a wonderful proof of affection. By not choos¬ 
ing to compromise the future, had she not confessed that she 
loved him ? 

At last nine o’clock struck ) Rodolphe could get into a car- 


340 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


riage and say with an emotion that is very intelligible, ** To 
the Villa Jeanrenaud—to Prince Gandolphini’s.” 

At last he saw Francesca, but without being seen by her. 
The Princess was standing quite near the piano. Her beauti¬ 
ful hair, so thick and long, was bound with a golden fillet. 
Her face, in the light of wax-candles, had the brilliant pallor 
peculiar to Italians, and which looks its best only by artificial 
light. She was in full evening dress, showing her fascinating 
shoulders, the figure of a girl and the arms of an antique 
statue. Her sublime beauty was beyond all possible rivalry, 
though there were some charming English and Russian ladies 
present, the prettiest women of Geneva, and other Italians, 
among them the dazzling and illustrious Princess Varese, and 
the famous singer Tinti, who was at that moment engaged in 
singing. 

Rodolphe, leaning against the door-post, looked at the 
Princess, turning on her the fixed, tenacious, attracting gaze, 
charged with the full, insistent will which is concentrated in 
the feeling called desire, and thus assumes the nature of a 
vehement command. Did the flame of that gaze reach Fran¬ 
cesca ? Was Francesca expecting each instant to see Rodolphe ? 
In a few minutes she stole a glance at the door, as though 
magnetized by this current of love, and her eyes, without 
reserve, looked deep into Rodolphe’s. A slight thrill quiv¬ 
ered through that superb face and beautiful body; the shock 
to her spirit reacted: Francesca blushed ! Rodolphe felt a 
whole life in this exchange of looks, so swift that it can only 
be compared to a lightning flash. But to what could his hap¬ 
piness compare ? He was loved. The lofty Princess, in the 
midst of her world, in this handsome villa, kept the pledge 
given by the disguised exile, the capricious beauty of Berg- 
manns’ lodgings. The intoxication of such a moment enslaves 
a man for life ! A faint smile, refined and subtle, candid and 
triumphant, curled Princess Gandolphini’s lips, and at a 
moment when she did not feel herself observed she looked at 


ALBERT SAVA ROM 


341 


Rodolphe with an expression which seemed to ask his pardon 
for having deceived him as to her rank. 

When the song was ended Rodolphe could make his way 
to the Prince, who graciously led him to his wife. Rodolphe 
went through the ceremonial of a formal introduction to 
Princess and Prince Colonna, and to Francesca. When this 
was over, the Princess had to take part in the famous quartette, 
Ml manca la voce, which was sung by her with Tinti, with the 
famous tenor Genovese, and with a well-known Italian prince 
then in exile, whose voice, if he had not been a prince, would 
have made him one of the princes of art. 

^^Take that seat,” said Francesca to Rodolphe, pointing 
to her own chair. I think there is some mistake 

in my name; I have for the last minute been Princess Ro- 
dolphini.” 

It was said with an artless grace which revived, in this 
avowal hidden beneath a jest, the happy days at Gersau. 
Rodolphe reveled in the exquisite sensation of listening to 
the voice of the woman he adored, while sitting so close to 
her that one cheek was almost touched by the stuff of her 
dress and the gauze of her scarf. But when, at such a moment. 
Mi manca la voce is being sung, and by the finest voices in 
Italy, it is easy to understand what it was that brought the 
tears to Rodolphe’s eyes. 

In love, as perhaps in all else, there are certain circum¬ 
stances, trivial in themselves, but the outcome of a thousand 
little previous incidents, of which the importance is immense, as 
an epitome of the past and as a link with the future. A 
hundred times already we have felt the preciousness of the 
one we love; but a trifle—the perfect touch of two souls 
united during a walk perhaps by a single word, by some 
unlooked-for proof of affection—will carry the feeling to its 
supremest pitch. In short, to express this truth by an image 
which has been pre-eminently successful from the earliest ages 
of the world, there arc in a long chain points of attachment 

y 


342 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


needed where the cohesion is stronger than in the intermediate 
loops of rings. This recognition between Rodolphe and 
Francesca, at this party, in the face of the world, was one of 
those intense moments which join the future to the past, and 
rivet a real attachment more deeply in the heart. It was 
perhaps of these incidental rivets that Bossuet spoke when he 
compared to them the rarity of happy moments in our lives— 
he who had such a living and secret experience of love. 

Next to the pleasure of admiring the woman we love comes 
that of seeing her admired by every one else. Rodolphe was 
enjoying both at once. Love is a treasury of memories, and 
though Rodolphe’s was already full, he added to it pearls of 
great price ; smiles shed aside for him alone, stolen glances, 
tones in her singing which Francesca addressed to him alone, 
but which made Tinti pale with jealousy, they w-ere so much 
applauded. All his strength of desire, the special expression 
of his soul, was thrown over the beautiful Roman, who became 
unchangeably the beginning and the end of all his thoughts 
and actions. Rodolphe loved as every woman may dream of 
being loved, with a force, a constancy, a tenacity, wdiich 
made Francesca the very substance of his heart; he felt her 
mingling with his blood as purer blood, with his soul as a 
more perfect soul; she would henceforth underlie the least 
efforts of his life as the golden sand of the Mediterranean lies 
beneath the waves. In short, Rodolphe’s lightest aspiration 
was now a living hope. 

At the end of a few days, Francesca understood this bound¬ 
less love; but it was so natural, and so perfectly shared by 
her, that it did not surprise her. She w'as worthy of it. 

^‘What is there that is strange? ” said she to Rodolphe, as 
they walked on the garden terrace, when he had been betrayed 
into one of those outbursts of conceit which come so natur¬ 
ally to Frenchmen in the expression of their feelings—‘‘ what 
is extraordinary in the fact of your loving a young and beau¬ 
tiful woman, artist enough to be able to earn her living like 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


343 


Tinti, and of giving you some of the pleasures of vanity? 
What lout but would then become an Amadis ? This is not 
in question between you and me. What is needed is that we 
both love faithfully, persistently; at a distance from each 
other for years, with no satisfaction but that of knowing that 
we are loved.” 

“ Alas ! ” said Rodolphe, “ will you not consider my fidelity 
as devoid of all merit when you see me absorbed in the efforts 
of devouring ambition? Do you imagine that I can wish to 
see you one day exchange the fine name of Gandolphini for 
that of a man who is a nobody ? I want to become one of the 
most remarkable men of my country, to be rich, great—that 
you may be as proud of my name as of your own name of 
Colonna.” 

“ I should be grieved to see you without such sentiments in 
your heart, ’ ’ she replied, with a bewitching smile. ‘ ‘ But do not 
wear yourself out too soon in your ambitious labors. Remain 
young. They say that politics soon make a man old.” 

One of the rarest gifts in women is a certain gaiety which 
does not detract from tenderness. This combination of deep 
feeling with the lightness of youth added an enchanting grace 
at this moment to Francesca’s charms. This is the key to her 
character; she laughs and she is touched ; she becomes enthu¬ 
siastic, and returns to arch raillery with a readiness, a facility, 
which make her the charming and exquisite creature she is, 
and for which her reputation is known outside Italy. Under 
the graces of a woman she conceals vast learning, thanks to 
the excessively monotonous and almost monastic life she led 
in the castle of the old Colonnas. 

This rich heiress was at first intended for the cloister, being 
the fourth child of Prince and Princess Colonna; but the 
death of her two brothers, and of her elder sister, suddenly 
brought her out of her retirement, and made her one of the 
most brilliant matches in the papal states. Her elder sister 
had been betrothed to Prince Gandolphini, one of the richest 


344 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


landowners in Sicily; and Francesca was married to him 
instead, so that nothing might be changed in the position of 
the family. The Colonnas and Gandolphinis had always 
intermarried. 

From the age of nine till she was sixteen, Francesca, under 
the direction of a cardinal of the family, had read all through 
the library of the Colonnas, to make weight against her ardent 
imagination by studying science, art, and letters. But in these 
studies she acquired the taste for independence and liberal 
ideas, which threw her, with her husband, into the ranks of 
the revolution. Rodolphe had not yet learned that, besides 
five living languages, Francesca knew Greek, Latin, and 
Hebrew. The charming creature perfectly understood that, 
for a woman, the first condition of being learned is to keep 
it deeply hidden. 

Rodolphe spent the whole winter at Geneva. This winter 
passed like a day. When spring returned, notwithstanding 
the infinite delights of the society of a clever woman, 
wonderfully well informed, young and lovely, the lover went 
through cruel sufferings, endured indeed with courage, but 
which were sometimes legible in his countenance, and be¬ 
trayed themselves in his manners or speech, perhaps because 
he believed that Francesca shared them. Now and again it 
annoyed him to admire her calmness. Like an English¬ 
woman, she seemed to pride herself on expressing nothing 
in her face; its serenity defied love ; he longed to see her 
agitated; he accused her of having no feeling, for he believed 
in the tradition which ascribes to Italian women a feverish 
excitability. 

am a Roman!” Francesca gravely replied one day 
when she took quite seriously some banter on this subject from 
Rodolphe, 

There was a depth of tone in her reply which gave it the 
appearance of scathing irony, and which set Rodolphe's 
pulses throbbing. The month of May spread before them the 


ALBERT SAVA RON, 


345 


treasures of her fresh verdure ; the sun was sometimes as 
powerful as at midsummer. The two lovers happened to be 
at a part of the terrace where the rock rises abruptly from 
the lake, and where leaning over the stone parapet that 
crowns the wall above a flight of steps leading down to a 
landing-stage. From the neighboring villa, where there is a 
similar stairway, a boat presently shot out like a swan, its flag 
flaming, its crimson awning spread over a lovely woman com¬ 
fortably reclining on red cushions, her hair wreathed with real 
flowers; the boatman was a young man dressed like a sailor, 
and rowing with all the more grace because he was under the 
lady’s eye. 

^‘They are happy ! ” exclaimed Rodolphe, with bitter em¬ 
phasis. Claire de Bourgogne, the last survivor of the only 
house which could ever vie with the royal family of France-” 

Oh ! of a bastard branch, and that a female line.” 

At any rate, she is Vicomtesse de Beauseant; and she did 
not-” 

Did not hesitate, you would say, to bury herself here 
with Monsieur Gaston de Nueil,” replied the daughter of the 
Colonnas. “ She is only a Frenchwoman ; I am an Italian, 
my dear sir ! ” 

Francesca turned away from the parapet, leaving Rodolphe, 
and went to the farther end of the terrace, whence there is a 
wide prospect of the lake. Watching her as she slowly walked 
away, Rodolphe suspected that he had wounded her soul, at 
once so simple and so wise, so proud and so humble. It 
turned him cold ; he followed Francesca, who signed to him 
to leave her to herself. But he did not heed the warning, 
and detected her wiping away her tears. Tears ! in so strong 
a nature. 

Francesca,” said he, taking her hand, is there a single 
regret in your heart? ” 

She was silent, disengaged her hand which held her em¬ 
broidered handkerchief, and again dried her eyes. 




m 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


Forgive me ! ” he said. And with a rush, he kissed her 
eyes to wipe away the tears. 

Francesca did not seem aware of his passionate impulse, she 
was so violently agitated. Rodolphe, thinking she consented, 
grew bolder; he put his arm round her, clasped her to his 
heart, and snatched a kiss. But she freed herself by a dig¬ 
nified movement of offended modesty, and, standing a yard 
off, she looked at him without anger, but with firm deter¬ 
mination. 

‘‘ Go this evening,” she said. ‘‘ We meet no more till we 
meet at Naples.” 

The order was stern, but it was obeyed, for it was Fran¬ 
cesca’s will. 

On his return to Paris, Rodolphe found in his rooms a por¬ 
trait of Princess Gandolphini painted by Schinner, as Schinner 
can paint. The artist had passed through Geneva on his way 
to Italy. As he had positively refused to paint the portraits 
of several women, Rodolphe did not believe that the Prince, 
anxious as he was for a portrait of his wife, would be able to 
conquer the great painter’s objections; but Francesca, no 
doubt, had bewitched him, and obtained from him—which 
was almost a miracle—an original portrait for Rodolphe, and 
a duplicate for Emilio. She told him this in a charming and 
delightful letter, in which the mind indemnified itself for the 
reserve required by the worship of the proprieties. The lover 
replied. Thus began, never to cease, a regular correspond¬ 
ence between Rodolphe and Francesca, and W’hich was the 
only indulgence that they allowed themselves through the 
many years following. 

Rodolphe, possessed by an ambition sanctified by his love, 
set to work. First he longed to make his fortune, and risked 
his all in an undertaking to which he devoted all his faculties 
as well as his capital; but he, an inexperienced youth, had to 
contend against duplicity, which won the day. Thus three 


ALBERT SAVAROJSr. 


S47 


years were lost in a vast enterprise, three years of struggling 
and courage. 

The Villele ministry fell just when Rodolphe was ruined. 
The valiant lover thought he would seek in politics what com¬ 
mercial industry had refused him ; but before braving the 
storms of this career, he went, all wounded and sick at heart, 
to have his bruises healed and his courage revived at Naples, 
where the Prince and Princess had been reinstated in their 
place and rights on the King’s accession. This, in the midst 
of his warfare, was a respite full of delights ; he spent three 
months at the Villa Gandolphini, rocked in hope. 

Rodolphe then began again to construct his fortune. His 
talents were already known ; he was about to attain the de¬ 
sires of his ambitions; a high position was promised him as 
the reward of his zeal, his devotion, and his past services, when 
the storm of July, 1830, broke, and again his bark was swamped. 

She, and God ! These are the only witnesses of the brave 
efforts, the daring attempts of a young man gifted with fine 
qualities, but to whom, so far, the protection of luck—the god 
of fools—has been denied. And this indefatigable wrestler, 
upheld by love, comes back to fresh struggles, lighted on his 
way by an always friendly eye, an ever-faithful heart. 

Lovers ! Pray for him ! 


As she finished this narrative. Mademoiselle de Watteville’s 
cheeks were on fire; there was a fever in her blood. She was 
crying—but with rage. This little novel, inspired by the 
literary style then in fashion, was the first reading of the kind 
that Rosalie had ever had the chance of devouring. Love 
was depicted in it, if not by a master-hand, at any rate by a 
man who seemed to give his own impressions; and truth, 
even if unskilled, could not fail to touch a virgin soul. Here 
lay the secret of Rosalie’s terrible agitation, of her fever and 
her tears; she was jealous of Francesca Colonna. 



348 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


She never for an instant doubted the sincerity of this 
poetical flight; Albert had taken pleasure in telling the story 
of his passion, while changing the names of persons and per¬ 
haps of places. Rosalie was possessed by infernal curiosity. 
What woman but would, like her, have wanted to know her 
rival’s name—for she too loved ! As she read these pages, to 
her really contagious, she had said solemnly to herself, “I 
love him ! ” She loved Albert, and felt in her heart a gnaw¬ 
ing desire to fight for him, to snatch him from this unknown 
rival. She reflected that she knew nothing of music, and 
that she was not beautiful. 

‘‘ He will never love me ! ” thought she. 

This conclusion aggravated her anxiety to know whether 
she might not be mistaken, whether Albert really loved an 
Italian princess, and was loved by her. In the course of this 
fateful night, the power of swift decision, which had charac¬ 
terized the famous Watteville, was fully developed in his 
descendant. She devised those whimsical schemes, round 
which hovers the imagination of most young girls when, in 
the solitude to which some injudicious mothers confine them, 
they are aroused by some tremendous event which the system 
of repression to which they are subjected could neither foresee 
nor prevent. She dreamed of descending by a ladder from 
the kiosk into the garden of the house occupied by Albert; 
of taking advantage of the lawyer being asleep to look 
through the window into his private room. She thought of 
writing to him, or of bursting the fetters of Besan^on society 
by introducing Albert to the drawing-room of the Hotel de 
Rupt. This enterprise, which to the Abb6 de Grancey even 
would have seemed the climax of the impossible, was a mere 
passing thought. 

‘‘ Ah ! ” said she to herself, my father has a dispute pend¬ 
ing as to his land at les Rouxey. I will go there ! If there 
is no lawsuit, I will manage to make one, and he shall come 
into our drawing-room ! ” she cried, as she sprang out of bed 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


m 


and to the window to look at the fascinating gleam which 
shone through Albert’s lights. The clock struck one; he was 
still asleep. 

‘‘ I shall see him when he gets up ; perhaps he will come to 
his window.” 

At this instant Mademoiselle de Watteville was witness to 
an incident which promised to place in her power the means 
of knowing Albert’s secrets. By the light of the moon she 
saw a pair of arms stretched out from the kiosk to help Jer6me, 
Albert’s servant, to get across the coping of the wall and step 
into the little building. In Jerome’s accomplice Rosalie at 
once recognized Mariette the lady’s maid. 

“ Mariette and Jerome ! ” said she to herself. Mariette, 
such an ugly girl! Certainly they must be ashamed of them¬ 
selves.” 

Though Mariette was horribly ugly and six-and-thirty, she 
had inherited several plots of land. She had been seventeen 
years with Madame de Watteville, who valued her highly for 
her bigotry, her honesty, and long service, and she had no 
doubt saved money and invested her wages and perquisites. 
Hence, earning about ten louis a year, she probably had by 
this time, including compound interest and her little inherit¬ 
ance, not less than ten thousand francs. 

In Jerome’s eyes ten thousand francs could alter the laws of 
optics; he saw in Mariette a neat figure; he did not perceive 
the pits and seams which virulent smallpox had left on her 
flat, parched face; to him the crooked mouth was straight; 
and ever since Savaron, by taking him into his service, had 
brought him so near to the Wattevilles’ house, he had laid 
siege systematically to the maid, who was as prim and sancti¬ 
monious as her mistress, and who, like every ugly old maid, 
was far more exacting than the handsomest. 

If the night-scene in the kiosk is thus fully accounted for to 
all perspicacious readers, it was not so to Rosalie, though she 
derived from it the most dangerous lesson that can be given, 


350 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


that of a bad example. A mother brings her daughter up 
strictly, keeps her under her wing for seventeen years, and 
then, in one hour, a servant-girl destroys the long and painful 
work, sometimes by a word, often indeed by a gesture ! 
Rosalie got into bed again, not without considering how she 
might take advantage of her discovery. 

Next morning, as she went to mass accompanied by Mariette 
—her mother was not well—Rosalie took the maid’s arm, 
which surprised the country wench not a little. 

‘‘Mariette,” said she, “is Jerome in his master’s confi¬ 
dence ? ’ ’ 

“I do not know, mademoiselle.” 

“Do not play the innocent with me,” said Mademoiselle 
de Watteville drily. “ You let him kiss you last night under 
the kiosk; I no longer wonder that you so warmly approved 
of my mother’s ideas for the improvements she planned.” 

Rosalie could feel how Mariette was trembling by the shak¬ 
ing of her arm. 

“ I wish you no ill,” Rosalie went on. “Be quite easy; 
I shall not say a word to my mother, and you can meet 
Jerome as often as you please.” 

“But, mademoiselle,” replied Mariette, “it is perfectly 
respectable; Jerome honestly means to marry me-” 

“ But then,” said Rosalie, “ why meet at night ? ” 

Mariette was completely dumfounded, and could make no 
reply. 

“ Listen, Mariette; I am in love too ! In secret and with¬ 
out any return. I am, after all, my father’s and mother’s 
only child. You have more to hope for from me than from 
any one else in the world-” 

“ Certainly, mademoiselle, and you may count on us for life 
or death,” exclaimed Mariette, rejoiced at the unexpected 
turn of affairs. 

“ In the first place, silence for silence,” said Rosalie. “I 
will not marry Monsieur de Soulas; but one thing I will havej 




ALBERT SAFA RON. 


351 


and must have ; my help and favor are yours on one condition 
only.” 

“ What is that ? ” 

“ I must see the letters which Monsieur Savaron sends to 
the post by Jerome.” 

But what for? ” said Mariette in alarm. 

“Oh! merely to read them, and you yourself shall post 
them afterwards. It will cause a little delay; that is all.” 

At this moment they went into church, and each of them, 
instead of reading the order of mass, fell into her own train 
of thought. 

“ Dear, dear, how many sins are there in all that ? ” thought 
Mariette. 

Rosalie, whose soul, brain, and heart were completely 
upset by reading the story, by this time regarded it as 
history, written for her rival. By dint of thinking of noth¬ 
ing else, like a child, she ended by believing that the 
Eastern Review was no doubt forwarded to Albert’s lady¬ 
love. 

“Oh ! ” said she to herself, her head buried in her hands 
in the attitude of a person lost in prayer; Oh ! how can I 
get my father to look through the list of people to whom the 
Review is sent ? ’ ’ 

After breakfast she took a turn in the garden with her 
father, coaxing and cajoling him, and brought him to the 
kiosk. 

“ Do you suppose, my dear little papa, that our Review is 
ever read abroad ? ’ ’ 

“ It is but just started-” 

“ Well, I will wager that it is.” 

“It is hardly possible.” 

“Just go and find out, and note the names of any sub¬ 
scribers out of France.” 

Two hours later Monsieur de Watteville said to his 
daughter— 



352 


ALBERT SAVA RON, 


I was right; there is not one foreign subscriber as yet. 
They hope to get some at Neufchatel, at Berne, and at 
Geneva. One copy is, in fact, sent to Italy, but it is not 
paid for—to a Milanese lady at her country house at Bel- 
girate, on Lago Maggiore.” 

What is her name ? ” 

“ The Duchesse d’Argaiolo.” 

Do you know her, papa ? ” 

“ I have heard about her. She was by birth a Princess 
Soderini, a Florentine, a very great lady, and quite as rich as 
her husband, who has one of the largest fortunes in Lom¬ 
bardy. Their villa on the Lago Maggiore is one of the sights 
of Italy.” 

Two days after, Mariette placed the following letter in 
Mademoiselle de Watteville’s hands: 

Albert Savaron to Leopold Hannequin. 

^‘Yes, ’tis so, my dear friend; I am at Besangon, while 
you thought I was traveling. I would not tell you anything 
till success should begin, and now it is dawning. Yes, my 
dear Leopold, after so many abortive undertakings, over 
which I have shed the best of my blood, have wasted so many 
efforts, spent so much courage, I have made up my mind to 
do as you have done—to start on a beaten path, on the high¬ 
road, as the longest but the safest. I can see you jump with 
surprise in your lawyer’s chair ! 

“But do not suppose that anything is changed in my per¬ 
sonal life, of which you alone in the world know the secret, 
and that under the reservations she insists on. I did not tell 
you, my friend; but I was horribly w^eary of Paris. The 
outcome of the first enterprise, on which I had founded all 
my hopes, and which came to a bad end in consequence of 
the utter rascality of my two partners, who combined to cheat 
and fleece me—me, though everything was done by my energy 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


353 


—made me give up the pursuit of a fortune after the loss of 
three years of my life. One of these years was spent in the 
law courts, and perhaps I should have come worse out of the 
scrape if I had not been made to study law when I was 
twenty. 

“I made up my mind to go into politics solely, to the 
end that I may some day find my name in a list for promo¬ 
tion to the Senate under the title of Comte Albert Savaron 
de Savarus, and so revive in France a good name now extinct 
in Belgium—though indeed I am neither legitimate nor legit¬ 
imized.” 

“Ah! I knew it! He is of noble birth!” exclaimed 
Rosalie, dropping the letter. 

“ You know how conscientiously I studied, how faithful 
and useful I was as an obscure journalist, and how excellent 
a secretary to the statesman who, on his part, was true to me 
in 1829. Flung to the depths once more by the revolution 
of July, just when my name was becoming known, at the very 
moment when, as master of appeals, I was about to find my 
place as a necessary wheel in the political machine, I com¬ 
mitted the blunder of remaining faithful to the fallen, and 
fighting for them, without them. Oh ! why was I but three- 
and-thirty, and why did I not apply to you to make me 
eligible? I concealed from you all my devotedness and my 
dangers. What would you have? I was full of faith. We 
should not have agreed. 

» “ Ten months ago, when you saw me so gay and contented, 

writing my political articles, I was in despair; I foresaw my 
fate, at the age of thirty-seven, with two thousand francs for 
my whole fortune, without the smallest fame, just having 
failed in a noble undertaking, the founding, namely, of a 
daily paper, answering only to a need of the future instead of 
appealing to the passions of the moment. I did not know 
which way to turn, and I felt my own value ! I wandered 
about, gloomy and hurt, through the lonely places of Paris— 
23 


354 


ALBERT SAVA RON, 


Paris which had slipped through my fingers—thinking of my 
crushed ambitions, but never giving them up. Oh, what 
frantic letters I wrote at that time to her^ my second con¬ 
science, my other self! Sometimes, I would say to myself, 
‘Why did I sketch so vast a programme of life? Why 
demand everything ? Why not wait for happiness while 
devoting myself to some mechanical employment.’ 

“ I then looked about me for some modest appointment by 
which I might live. I was about to get the editorship of a 
paper under a manager who did not know much about it, a 
man of wealth and ambition, when I took fright. ‘ Would 
she ever accept as her husband a man who had stooped so 
low ? ’ I wondered. 

“ This reflection made me two-and-twenty again. But, oh, 
my dear Leopold, how the soul is worn by these perplexities! 
What must not caged eagles suffer, and imprisoned lions I 
They suffer what Napoleon suffered, not at Saint Helena, but 
on the Quay of the Tuileries, on the loth of August, when 
he saw Louis XVI. defending himself so badly while he could 
have quelled the insurrection ; as he actually did, on the same 
spot, a little later, in Vendemiaire. Well, my life has been 
a torment of that kind, extending over four years. How 
many a speech to the Chamber have I not delivered in the 
deserted alleys of the Bois de Boulogne! These wasted 
harangues have at any rate sharpened my tongue and accus¬ 
tomed my mind to formulate its ideas in words. And while 
I was undergoing this secret torture, you were getting married, 
you had paid for your business, you were made law-clerk to 
the mayor of your district, after gaining the cross for a wound 
at Saint-Merrb 

“ Now, listen. When I was a small boy and tortured cock¬ 
chafers, the poor insects had one form of struggle which used 
almost to put me in a fever. It was when I saw them making 
repeated efforts to fly but without getting away, though they 
could spread their wings. We used to say, ‘ They are mark- 


ALBERT SAVARON, 


355 


ing time.* Now, was this sympathy ? Was it a vision of my 
own future ? Oh ! to spread my wings and yet be unable to 
fly! That has been my predicament since that fine under¬ 
taking by which I was disgusted, but which has now made 
four families rich. 

“At last, seven months ago, I determined to make myself 
a name at the Paris bar, seeing how many vacancies had been 
left by the promotion of several lawyers to eminent positions. 
But when I remembered the rivalry I had seen among men of 
the press, and how difficult it is to achieve anything of any 
kind in Paris, the arena where so many champions meet, I 
came to a determination painful to myself, but certain in its 
results, and perhaps quicker than any other. In the course of 
our conversations you had given me a picture of the society 
of Besangon, of the impossibility for a stranger to get on 
there, to produce the smallest effect, to get into society, or to 
succeed in any way whatever. It was there that I determined 
to set up my flag, thinking, and rightly, that I should meet 
with no opposition, but find myself alone to canvass for the 
election. The people of the Comte will not meet the out¬ 
sider ? The outsider will not meet them ! They refuse to 
admit him to their drawing-rooms, he will never go there ! 
He never shows himself anywhere, not even in the streets! 
But there is one class that elects the deputies—the commercial 
class. I am going especially to study commercial questions, 
with which I am already familiar ; I will gain their lawsuits, 
I will effect compromises, I will be the greatest pleader in 
Besangon. By-and-by I will start a Review^ in which I will 
defend the interests of the country, will create them, or pre¬ 
serve them, or resuscitate them. When I shall have won a 
sufficient number of votes, my name will come out of the urn. 
For a long time the unknown barrister will be treated with 
contempt, but some circumstance will arise to bring him to 
the front—some unpaid defense, or a case which no other 
pleader will undertake. 


S56 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


“ Well, my dear Leopold, I packed up my books in eleven 
cases, I bought such law-books as might prove useful, and I 
sent everything off, furniture and all, by carrier to Besan^on. 
I collected my diplomas, and I went to bid you good-bye. 
The mail-coach dropped me at Besangon, where, in three 
days’ time, I chose a little set of rooms looking out over some 
gardens. I sumptuously arranged the mysterious private room 
where I spend my nights and days, and where the portrait of 
my divinity reigns—of her to whom my life is dedicated, who 
fills it wholly, who is the mainspring of my efforts, the secret 
of my courage, the cause of my talents. Then, as soon as the 
furniture and books had come, I engaged an intelligent man¬ 
servant, and there I sat for five months like a hibernating 
marmot. 

“ My name had, however, been entered on the list of law¬ 
yers in the town. At last I was called one day to defend an 
unhappy wretch at the assizes, no doubt in order to hear me 
speak for once ! One of the most influential merchants of 
Besan^on was on the jury; he had a difficult task to fulfill; I 
did my utmost for the man, and my success was absolute and 
complete. My client was innocent; I very dramatically se¬ 
cured the arrest of the real criminals, who had come forward 
as witnesses. In short, the court and the public were united 
in their admiration. I managed to save the examining magis¬ 
trate’s pride by pointing out the impossibility of detecting a 
plot so skillfully planned. 

“Then I had to fight a case for my merchant, and won his 
suit. The Cathedral Chapter next chose me to defend a tre¬ 
mendous action against the town, which had been going on 
for four years ; I won that. Thus after three trials, I had be¬ 
come the most famous advocate of Franche-Comte. 

“ But I bury my life in the deepest mystery, and so hide 
my aims. I have adopted habits which prevent my accepting 
any invitations. I am only to be consulted between six and 
eight in the morning; I go to bed after my dinner, and work 


ALBERT SAVA ROM 


357 


at night. The vicar-general, a man of parts, and very influen¬ 
tial, who placed the chapter’s case in my hands after they 
had lost it in the lower court, of course professed their grati¬ 
tude. ‘Monsieur,’ said I, ‘I will win your suit, but I want 
no fee; I want more ’ (start of alarm on the abbe’s part). 
‘ You must know that I am a great loser by putting myself 
forward in antagonism to the town. I came here only to 
leave the place as deputy. I mean to engage only in com¬ 
mercial cases, because commercial men return the members; 
they will distrust me if I defend “the priests”—for to them 
you are simply the priests. If I undertake your defense, it is 
because I was, in 1828, private secretary to such a minister’ 
(again a start of surprise on the part of my abbe), ‘ and mas¬ 
ter of appeals, under the name of Albert de Savarus ’ (an¬ 
other start). ‘ I have remained faithful to monarchical opin¬ 
ions ; but, as you have not the majority of votes in Besangon, 
I must gain votes among the citizens. So the fee I ask of you 
is the votes you may be able secretly to secure for me at the 
opportune moment. Let us each keep our own counsel, and 
I will defend, for nothing, every case to which a priest of this 
diocese may be a party. Not a word about my previous life, 
and we will be true to each other.’ 

“ When he came to thank me afterwards, he gave me a 
note for five hundred francs, and said in my ear, ‘ The votes 
are a bargain all the same.’ I have in the course of five 
interviews made a friend, I think, of this vicar-general. 

“ Now I am overwhelmed with business, and I understand 
no cases but those brought me by merchants, saying that com¬ 
mercial questions are my specialty. This line of conduct 
attaches business men to me, and allows me to make friends 
with influential persons. So all goes well. Within a few 
months I shall have found a house to purchase in Besan^on, 
so as to secure a qualification. I count on your lending me 
the necessary capital for this investment. If I should die, if 
I should fail, the loss would be too small to be any considera- 


358 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


tion between you and me. You will get the interest out of 
the rental, and I shall take good care to lookout for some¬ 
thing cheap, so that you may lose nothing by this mortgage, 
which is indispensable. 

“ Oh ! my dear Leopold, no gambler with the last remains 
of his fortune in his pocket, bent on staking it at the Cercle 
des Etrangers for the last time one night, when he must come 
away rich or ruined, ever felt such a perpetual ringing in his 
ears, such a nervous moisture on his palms, such a fevered 
tumult in his brain, such inward qualms in his body as I go 
through every day now that I am playing my last card in the 
game of ambition. Alas! my dear and only friend, for 
nearly ten years now have 1 been struggling. This battle 
with men and things, in which I have unceasingly poured out 
my strength and energy, and so constantly worn the springs 
of desire, has, so to speak, undermined my vitality. With 
all the appearance of a strong man of good health, I feel 
myself a wreck. Every day carries with it a shred of my in¬ 
most life. At every fresh effort I feel that I should never be 
able to begin again. I have no power, no vigor left but for 
happiness; and if it should never come to crown my head 
with roses, the me that is really me would cease to exist, I 
should be a ruined thing. I should wish for nothing more in 
the world. I should want to cease from living. You know 
that power and fame, the vast moral empire that I crave, is 
but secondary ; it is to me only a means to happiness, the 
pedestal for my idol. 

To reach the goal and die, like the runner of antiquity! 
To see fortune and death stand on the threshold hand in 
hand ! To win the beloved woman just when love is extinct! 
To lose the faculty of enjoyment after earning the right to be 
happy ! Of how many men has this been the fate ! 

“ But there surely is a moment when Tantalus rebels, crosses 
his arms, and defies hell, throwing up his part of the eternal 
dupe. That is what I shall come to if anything should thwart 


A LBER T SA VAR ON. 


359 


my plan ; if, after stooping to the dust of provincial life, prowl¬ 
ing like a starving tiger round these tradesmen, these electors, 
to secure their votes; if, after wrangling in these squalid 
cases, and giving them my time—the time I might have spent 
on Lago Maggiore, seeing the waters she sees, basking in her 
gaze, hearing her voice—if, after all, I failed to scale the 
tribune and conquer the glory that should surround the name 
that is to succeed to that of Argaiolo ! Nay, more than this, 
Leopold ; there are days when I feel a heavy languor; deep 
disgust surges up from the depths of my soul, especially when, 
abandoned to long day-dreams, I have lost myself in anticipa¬ 
tion of the joys of blissful love ! May it not be that our de¬ 
sire has only a certain modicum of power, and that it perishes, 
perhaps, of a too lavish effusion of its essence? For, after 
all, at this present, my life is fair, illuminated by faith, work, 
and love. 

Farewell, my friend; I send love to your children, and 
beg you to remember me to your excellent wife. Yours, 

‘‘ Albert.” 

Rosalie read this letter twice through, and its general purport 
was stamped on her heart. She suddenly saw the whole of 
Albert’s previous existence, for her quick intelligence threw 
light on all the details, and enabled her to take it all in. By 
adding this information to the little novel published in the 
Revieiu^ she now fully understood Albert. Of course, she 
exaggerated the greatness, remarkable as it was, of this lofty 
soul and potent will, and her love for Albert thencefortli 
became a passion, its violence enhanced by all the strength of 
her youth, the weariness of her solitude, and the unspent 
energy of her character. Love is in a young girl the effect 
of a natural law ; but when her craving for affection is centred 
in an exceptional man, it is mingled with the enthusiasm 
which overflows in a youthful heart. Thus Mademoiselle de 
Watteville had in a few days reached a morbid and very 


360 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


dangerous stage of enamored infatuation. The Baroness was 
much pleased with her daughter, who, being under the spell 
of her absorbing thoughts, never resisted her will, seemed to 
be devoted to feminine occupations, and realized her mother’s 
ideal of a docile daughter. 

The lawyer was now engaged in court two or three times a 
week. Though he was overwhelmed with business he found 
time to attend the trials, call on litigious merchants, and 
conduct the Review; keeping up his personal mystery, 
from the conviction that the more covert and hidden was his 
influence, the more real it would be. But he neglected no 
means of success, reading up the list of electors of Besangon, 
and finding out their interests, their characters, their various 
friendships and antipathies. Did ever a cardinal hoping to 
be made pope give himself more trouble? 

One evening Mariette, on coming to dress Rosalie for an 
evening party, handed to her, not without many groans over this 
treachery, a letter of which the address made Mademoiselle 
de Watteville shiver and redden and turn pale again as she 
read the address: 

To Madame la Duchesse d'Argaiolo 

{nie Princesse Soderini)^ 

At BelgiratCf 

Lago Maggiore, Italy. 

In her eyes this direction blazed as the words Me?ie^ Mene, 
Tekel, Upharsin, did in the eyes of Belshazzar. After concealing 
the letter, Rosalie went downstairs to accompany her mother 
to Madame de Chavoncourt’s; and as long as the endless 
evening lasted, she was tormented by remorse and scruples. 
She had already felt shame at having violated the secrecy of 
Albert’s letter to Leopold; she had several times asked her¬ 
self whether, if he knew of her crime, infamous inasmuch as 
it necessarily goes unpunished, the high-minded Albert could 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


361 


esteem her. Her conscience answered an uncompromising 
^‘No.” 

She had expiated her sin by self-imposed penances; she 
fasted; she mortified herself by remaining on her knees, her 
arms outstretched for hours, and repeating prayers all the time. 
She had compelled Mariette to similar acts of repentance; her 
passion was mingled with genuine asceticism, and was all the 
more dangerous. 

Shall I read that letter, shall I not?” she asked herself, 
while listening to the Chavoncourt girls. One was sixteen, 
the other seventeen and a half. Rosalie looked upon her two 
friends as mere children because they were not secretly in love. 
“ If I read it,” she finally decided, after hesitating for an hour 
between yes and no, “ it shall, at any rate, be the last. Since 
I have gone so far as to see what he wrote to his friend, why 
should I not know what he says to her? If it is a horrible 
crime, is it not a proof of love ? Oh, Albert ! am I not your 
love?” 

When Rosalie was in bed she opened the letter, dated from 
day to day, so as to give the Duchess a faithful picture of 
Albert’s life and feelings. 

My dear Soul, all is well. To my other conquests I have 
just added an invaluable one : I have done a service to one of 
the most influential men who work the elections. Like the 
critics, who make other men’s reputations but can never make 
their own, he makes deputies though he can never become one. 
The worthy man wanted to show his gratitude without loosen¬ 
ing his purse-strings by saying to me, ‘ Would you care to sit 
in the Chamber? I can get you returned as deputy.’ 

‘‘ ‘ If I ever made up my mind to enter on a political 
career,’ replied I hypocritically, ‘ it would be to devote 
myself to the Comte, which I love, and where I am appre¬ 
ciated.’ 

^ Well,’ he said, ‘ we will persuade you, and through you 


;62 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


we shall have weight in the Chamber, for you will distinguish 
yourself there.’ 

‘‘And so, my beloved angel, say what you will, my perse¬ 
verance will be rewarded. Ere long I shall, from the high- 
place of the French Tribune, come before my country, before 
Europe. My name will be flung to you by the hundred voices 
of the French press. 

“ Yes, as you tell me, I was old when I came to Besan^on, 
and Besan^on has aged me more; but, like Sixtus V., I shall 
be young again the day after my election. I shall enter on 
my true life, my own sphere. Shall we not then stand in the 
same line ? Count Savaron de Savarus, ambassador I know 
not where, may surely marry a Princess Soderini, the widow 
of the Due d’Argaiolo ! Triumph restores the youth of men 
who have been preserved by incessant struggles. Oh, my 
Life! with what gladness did I fly from my library to my 
private room, to tell your portrait of this progress before 
writing to you ! Yes, the votes I can command, those of 
the vicar-general, of the persons I can oblige, and of this 
client, make my election already sure. 

“ 26tk, 

“ We have entered on the twelfth year since that blest 
evening when, by a look, the beautiful Duchess sealed the 
promises made by the exile Francesca. You, dear, are thirty- 
two, I am thirty-five; the dear Duke is seventy-seven—that is 
to say, ten years more than yours and mine put together, and 
he still keeps well ! My patience is almost as great as my 
love, and indeed I need a few years yet to rise to the level of 
your name. As you see, I am in good spirits to-day, I can 
laugh ; that is the effect of hope. Sadness or gladness, it all 
comes to me through you. The hope of success always carries 
me back to the day following that on which I saw you for 
the first time, when my life became one with yours as the 
earth turns to the light. Qual pianto are these eleven years, 
for this is the 26th of December, the anniversary of my arrival 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


3G3 


at your villa on the Lake of Geneva. For eleven years have I 
been crying to you, while you shine like a star set too high 
for man to reach it. 

‘^No, dearest, do not go to Milan; stay at Belgirate. 
Milan terrifies me. I do not like that odious Milanese fashion 
of chatting at the Scala every evening with a dozen persons, 
among whom it is hard if no one says something sweet. To 
me solitude is like the lump of amber in whose heart an insect 
lives for ever in unchanging beauty. Thus the heart and soul 
of a woman remain pure and unaltered in the form of their 
first youth. Is it the Tedeschi that you regret ? 

« 2Zth. 

Is your statue never to be finished? I should wish to 
have you in marble, in painting, in miniature, in every pos¬ 
sible form, to beguile my impatience. I still am waiting for 
the view of Belgirate from the south, and that of the balcony; 
these are all that I now lack. I am so extremely busy that 
to-day I can only write you nothing—but that nothing is 
everything. Was it not of nothing that God made the world ? 
That nothing is a word, God’s word : I love you ! 

« zoth. 

^^Ah! I have received your journal. Thanks for your 
punctuality. So you found great pleasure in seeing all the 
details of our first acquaintance thus set down? Alas! even 
while disguising them I was sorely afraid of offending you. 
We had no stories, and a Review without stories is a beauty 
without hair. Not being inventive by nature, and in sheer 
despair, I took the only poetry in my soul, the only adventure 
in my memory, and pitched it in the key in which it would 
bear telling; nor did I ever cease to think of you while 
writing the only literary production that will ever come from 
my heart, I cannot say from my pen. Did not the trans¬ 
formation of your fierce Sormano into Gina cause you to 
laugh ? 


364 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


You ask after my health. Well, it is better than in Paris. 
Though I work enormously, the peacefulness of the surround¬ 
ings has its effect on the mind. What really tries and ages 
me, dear angel, is the anguish of mortified vanity, the per¬ 
petual friction of Paris life, the struggle of rival ambitions. 
This peace is a balm. 

“ If you could imagine the pleasure your letter gives me !— 
the long, kind letter in which you tell me the most trivial 
incidents of your life. No ! you women can never know to 
what a degree a true lover is interested in these trifles. It was 
an immense pleasure to see the pattern of your new dress. 
Can it be a matter of indifference to me to know what you 
wear? If your lofty brow is knit ? If our writers amuse you ? 
If Canalis’ songs delight you? I read the books you read. 
Even to your boating on the lake; every incident touched me. 
Your letter is as lovely, as sweet as your soul! Oh ! flower 
of heaven, perpetually adored, could I have lived without 
those dear letters, which for eleven years have upheld me in 
my difficult path like a light, like a perfume, like a steady 
chant, like some divine nourishment, like everything which 
can soothe and comfort life. 

“ Do not fail me ! If you knew what anxiety I suffer the 
day before they are due, or the pain a day’s delay can give 
me ! Is she ill ? Is he / I am midway between hell and 
paradise. 

“ O 7nia cara diva, keep up your music, exercise your voice, 
practice. I am enchanted with the coincidence of employ¬ 
ments and hours by which, though separated by the Alps, we 
live by precisely the same rule. The thought charms me and 
gives me courage. The first time I undertook to plead here— 
I forgot to tell you this—I fancied that you were listening to 
me, and I suddenly felt the flash of inspiration which lifts the 
poet above mankind. If I am returned to the Chamber—oh ! 
you must come to Paris to be present at my first appearance 
there I 


ALBERT SAVA ROM 


365 


» “ 30M, Evening. 

Good heavens, how I love you ! Alas! I have in¬ 
trusted too much to my love and my hopes. An accident 
which should sink that overloaded bark would end my life ! 
For three years now I have not seen you, and at the thought 
of going to Belgirate my heart beats so wildly that I am 
forced to stop. To see you, to hear that girlish caressing 
voice ! To embrace in my gaze tliat ivory skin, glistening 
under the candlelight, and through which I can read your 
noble mind ! To admire your fingers playing on the keys, 
to drink in your whole soul in a look, in the tone of an Oim'e 
or an Alberto ! To walk by the blossoming orange trees, to 
live a few months in the bosom of that glorious scenery! 
That is life. What folly it is to run after power, a name, 
fortune ! But at Belgirate there is everything; there is poetry, 
there is glory! I ought to have made myself your steward, 
or, as that dear tyrant whom we cannot hate proposed to me, 
live there as cavaliere servente^ only our passion was too fierce 
to allow of it. 

Farewell, my angel, forgive me my next fit of sadness in 
consideration of this cheerful mood ; it has come as a beam 
of light from the torch of Hope, which has hitherto seemed 
to me a will-o’-the-wisp.’* 

How he loves her! ” cried Rosalie, dropping the letter, 
which seemed heavy in her hand, y After eleven years, to 
write like this 1 ” 

‘‘Mariette,” said Mademoiselle de Watteville to her maid 
next morning, go and post this letter. Tell Jerome that I 
know all I wished to know, and that he is to serve Monsieur 
Albert faithfully. We will confess our sins, you and I, without 
saying to whom the letters belonged, nor to whom they were 
going. I was in the wrong ; I alone am guilty.” 

Mademoiselle has been crying? ” said Mariette, noticing 
Rosalie’s eyes. 


366 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


Yes, but I do not want that my mother should perceive 
it; give me some very cold water.’’ 

In the midst of the storms of her passion Rosalie often lis¬ 
tened to the voice of conscience. Touched by the beautiful 
fidelity of these two hearts, she had just said her prayers, 
telling herself that there was nothing left to her but to be 
resigned, and to respect the happiness of two beings worthy 
of each other, submissive to fate, looking to God for every¬ 
thing, without allowing themselves any criminal acts or wishes. 
She felt a better woman, and had a certain sense of satisfac¬ 
tion after coming to this resolution, inspired by the natural 
rectitude of youth. And she was confirmed in it by a girl’s 
idea: She was sacrificing herself for him. 

“She does not knowhow to love,” thought she. “Ah! 
if it were I—I would give up everything to a man who loved 
me so. To be loved ! When, by whom shall I be loved ? 
That little Monsieur de Soulas only loves my money; if I 
were poor, he would not even look at me.” 

“Rosalie, my child, what are you thinking about? You 
are working beyond the outline,” said the Baroness to her 
daughter, who was making worsted-work slippers for the Baron. 

Rosalie spent the winter of 1834-35 torn by secret tumult; 
but in the spring, in the month of April, when she reached 
the age of nineteen, she sometimes thought that it would be 
a fine thing to triumph over a Duchesse d’Argaiolo. In silence 
and solitude the prospect of this struggle had fanned her pas¬ 
sion and her evil thoughts. She encouraged her romantic 
daring by making plan after plan. Although such characters 
are an exception, there are, unfortunately, too many Rosalies 
in the world, and this story contains a moral which ought to 
serve them as a warning. 

In the course of this winter Albert Savaron had quietly made 
considerable progress in Besangon. Most confident of suc¬ 
cess, he now impatiently awaited the dissolution of the 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


367 


Chamber. Among the men of the moderate party he haa 
won the suffrages of one of the makers of Besangon, a rich 
contractor, who had very wide influence. 

Wherever they settled the Romans took immense pains, 
and spent enormous sums to have an unlimited supply of good 
water in every town of their empire. At Bensagon they 
drank the water from Arcier, a hill at some considerable dis¬ 
tance from Besan^on. The town stands in a horseshoe circum¬ 
scribed by the river Doubs. Thus, to restore an aqueduct in 
order to drink the same water that the Romans drank, in a 
town watered by the Doubs, is one of those absurdities which 
only succeed in a country place where the most exemplary 
gravity prevails. If this whim could be brought home to the 
hearts of the citizens, it would lead to considerable outlay, and 
this expenditure would benefit the influential contractor. 

Albert Savaron de Savarus opined that the water of the 
river was good for nothing but to flow under a suspension 
bridge, and that the only drinkable water was that from 
Arcier. Articles were printed in the Review which merely 
expressed the views of the commercial interest of Besan^on. 
The nobility and the citizens, the moderates and the legiti¬ 
mists, the government party and the opposition, everybody, in 
short, was agreed that they must drink the same water as the 
Romans, and boast of a suspension bridge. The question of 
the Arcier water was the order of the day at Besangon. At 
Besangon—as in the matter of the two railways to Versailles— 
as for every standing abuse—there were private interests un¬ 
confessed which gave vital force to this idea. The reasonable 
folk in opposition to this scheme, who were indeed but few, 
were regarded as old women. No one talked of anything but 
of Savaron’s two projects. And thus, after eighteen months 
of underground labor, the ambitious lawyer had succeeded in 
stirring to its depths the most stagnant town in France, the 
most unyielding to foreign influence, in finding the length of 
Us foot, to use a vulgar phrase, and exerting a preponderant 


368 


ALBERT SAFA RON. 


influence without stirring from his own room. He had 
solved the singular problem of how to be powerful without 
being popular. 

In the course of this winter he won seven lawsuits for vari¬ 
ous priests of Besan9on. At moments he could breathe freely 
at the thought of his coming triumph. This intense desire, 
which made him work so many interests and devise so many 
springs, absorbed the last strength of his terribly overstrung 
soul. His disinterestedness was lauded, and he took his 
clients’ fees without comment. But this disinterestedness was, 
in truth, moral usury; he counted on a reward far greater to 
him than all the gold in the world. 

In the month of October, 1834, he had bought, ostensibly 
to serve a merchant who was in difficulties, with money loaned 
him by Leopold Hannequin, a house which gave him a quali¬ 
fication for election. He had not seemed to seek or desire 
this advantageous bargain. 

‘^You are really a remarkable man,” said the Abbe de 
Grancey, who, of course, had watched and understood the 
lawyer. The vicar-general had come to introduce to him a 
canon who needed his professional advice. You are a priest 
who has taken the wrong turning.” This observation struck 
Savaron. 

Rosalie, on her part, had made up her mind, in her strong 
girl’s head, to get Monsieur de Savaron into the drawing-room 
and acquainted with the society of the Hotel de Rupt. So 
far she had limited her desires to seeing and hearing Albert. 
She had compounded, so to speak, and a composition is often 
no more than a truce. 

Les Rouxey, the inherited estate of the Wattevilles, was 
worth just ten thousand francs a year; but in other hands it 
would have yielded a great deal more. The Baron in his 
indifference—for his wife was to have, and in fact had, forty 
thousand francs a year—left the management of Les Rouxey to 
a sort of factotum, an old servant of the Wattevilles named 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


369 


Modinier. Nevertheless, whenever the Baron and his wife 
wished to go out of the town, they went to Les Rouxey, which is 
very picturesquely situated. The chateau and the park were, 
in fact, created by the famous Watteville, who in his active 
old age was passionately attached to this magnificent spot. 

Between two precipitous hills—little peaks with bare sum¬ 
mits known as the great and the little Rouxey—in the heart 
of a ravine w’here the torrents from the heights, with the 
Dent de Vilard at their head, come tumbling to join the 
lovely upper waters of the Doubs, Watteville had a huge dam 
constructed, leaving two cuttings for the overflow. Above 
this dam he made a beautiful lake, and below it two cascades; 
and these, uniting a few yards below the falls, formed a 
lovely little river to irrigate the barren, uncultivated valley, 
hitherto devastated by the torrent. This lake, this valley, 
and these two hills he enclosed in a ring fence, and built him¬ 
self a retreat on the dam, which he widened to two acres by 
accumulating above it all the soil which had to be removed to 
make a channel for the river and the irrigation canals. 

When the Baron de Watteville thus obtained the lake above 
his dam he was owner of the two hills, but not of the upper 
valley thus flooded, through which there had been at all 
times a right-of-way to where it ends in a horseshoe under the 
Dent de Vilard. But this ferocious old man was so widely 
dreaded, that so long as he lived no claim was urged by the 
inhabitants of Riceys, the little village on the farther side of 
the Dent de Vilard. When the Baron died, he left the slopes 
of the two Rouxey hills joined by a strong wall, to protect 
from inundation the two lateral valleys opening into the 
valley of Rouxey, to the right and left at the foot of the 
Dent de Vilard. Thus he died the master of the Dent de 
Vilard. 

His heirs asserted their protectorate of the village of 
Riceys, and so maintained the usurpation. The old assassin, 
the old renegade, the old Abh€ Watteville, ended his career 
24 


370 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


by planting trees and making a fine road over the shoulder of 
one of the Rouxey hills to join the high-road. The estate 
belonging to this park and house was extensive, but badly 
cultivated; there were chalets on both hills and neglected 
forests of timber. It was all wild and deserted, left to the 
care of nature, abandoned to chance growths, but full of sub¬ 
lime and unexpected beauty. You may now imagine Les 
Rouxey. 

It is unnecessary to complicate this story by relating all the 
prodigious trouble and the inventiveness stamped with genius 
by which Rosalie achieved her end without allowing it to be 
suspected. It is enough to say that it was in obedience to her 
mother that she left Besangon in the month of May, 1835, in 
an antique traveling carriage drawn by a pair of sturdy hired 
horses, and accompanied her father to Les Rouxey. 

To a young girl love lurks in everything. VViien she rose, 
the morning after her arrival. Mademoiselle de Watteville 
saw from her bedroom window the fine expanse of water, 
from which the light mists rose like smoke, and were caught 
in the firs and larches, rolling up and along the hills till they 
reached the heights, and she gave a cry of admiration. 

They loved by the lakes ! She lives by a lake ! A lake 
is certainly full of love ! ” she thought. 

A lake fed by snows has opalescent colors and a translucency 
that make it one huge diamond ; but when it is shut in like 
that of Les Rouxey, between two granite masses covered with 
pines, when silence broods over it like that of the Savannahs 
or the Steppes, then every one must exclaim as Rosalie did. 

We owe that,” said her father, “ to the notorious Watte¬ 
ville.” 

‘^On my word,” said the girl, he did his best to earn 
forgiveness. Let us go in a boat to the farther end; it will 
give us an appetite for breakfast.” 

The Baron called two gardener lads who knew how to row, 
and took with him his prime minister, Modinier. The lake 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


371 


was about six acres in breadth, in some places ten or twelve, 
and four hundred in length. Rosalie soon found herself at 
the upper end shut in by the Dent de Vilard, the Jungfrau of 
that little Switzerland. 

Here we are. Monsieur le Baron,” said Modinier, signing 
to the gardeners to tie up the boat; will you come and 
look?” 

^‘Look at what?” asked Rosalie. 

Oh, nothing ! ” exclaimed the Baron. “ But you are a 
sensible girl; we have some little secrets between us, and I 
may tell you what ruffles my mind. Some difficulties have 
arisen since 1830 between the village authorities of Riceys 
and me, on account of this very Dent de Vilard, and I want 
to settle the matter without your mother knowing anything 
about it, for she is stubborn ; she is capable of flinging fire 
and flames broadcast, particularly if she should hear that the 
mayor of Riceys, a Republican, got up this action as a sop to 
his people.” 

Rosalie had presence of mind enough to disguise her delight, 
so as to work more effectually on her father. 

What action ? ” said she. 

‘‘Mademoiselle, the people of Riceys,” said Modinier, 
“ have long enjoyed the right of grazing and cutting fodder 
on their side of the Dent de Vilard. Now Monsieur Chan- 
tonnit, the mayor since 1830, declares that the whole Dent 
belongs to his district, and maintains that a hundred years 
ago, or more, there was a way through our grounds. You un¬ 
derstand that in that case we should no longer have them to 
ourselves. Then this barbarian would end by saying, what 
the old men in the village say, that the ground occupied by 
the lake was appropriated by the Abb6 de Watteville. That 
would be the end of Les Rouxey; what next?” 

“Indeed, my child, between ourselves, it is the truth,” 
said Monsieur de Watteville simply. “ The land is an usurpa¬ 
tion, with no title-deed but lapse of time. And, tlierefore, to 


372 


ALBERT SAVA ROLL, 


avoid all worry, I should wish to come to a friendly under-y 
standing as to my border-line on this side of the Denf/^e 
Vilard, and I will then raise a wall.” / 

“ If you give way to the municipality, it will swallow you 
up. You ought to have threatened Riceys.” 

That is just what I told the master last evening,” said 
Modinier. “But in confirmation of that view I proposed 
that he should come to see whether, on this side of the Dent 
or on the other, there may not be, high or low, some traces 
of an enclosure.” 

For a century the Dent de Vilard had been used by both 
parties without coming to extremities; it stood as a sort of 
party wall between the communes of Riceys and Les Rouxey, 
yielding little profit. Indeed, the object in dispute, being 
covered with snow for six months in the year, was of a nature 
to cool their ardor. Thus it required all the hot blast by 
which the revolution of 1830 inflamed the advocates of the 
people to stir up this matter, by which Monsieur Chantonnit, 
the mayor of Riceys, hoped to give a dramatic turn to his 
career on the peaceful frontier of Switzerland, and to immor¬ 
talize his term of office. Chantonnit, as his name shows, was 
a native of Neufchatel. 

“ My dear father,” said Rosalie, as they got into the boat 
again, “ I agree with Modinier. If you wish to secure the 
joint possession of the Dent de Vilard, you must act with 
decision and get a legal opinion which will protect you against 
this enterprising Chantonnit. Why should you be afraid? 
Get the famous lawyer Savaron—engage him at once, lest 
Chantonnit should place the interests of the village in his 
hands. The man who won the case for the chapter against 
the town can certainly win that of Watteville versus Riceys ! 
Besides,” she added, “ Les Rouxey will some day be mine— 
not for a long time yet, I trust. Well, then, do not leave me 
with a lawsuit on my hands. I like this place ; I shall often live 
here, and add to it as much as possible. On those banks,” and 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


378 


she pointed to the feet of the two hills, I shall cut flower¬ 
beds and make the loveliest English gardens. Let us go to 
Besangon and bring back with us the Abbe de Grancey, Mon¬ 
sieur Savaron, and my mother, if she cares to come. You can 
then make up your mind ; but in your place I should have 
done so already. Your name is Watteville, and you are afraid 
of a fight! If you should lose your case—well, I will never 
reproach you by a word ! ” 

“ Oh, if that is the way you take it,” said the Baron, I 
am quite ready; I will see the lawyer.” 

‘‘ Besides, a lawsuit is really great fun. It brings some 
interest into life, with coming and going and raging over it. 
You will have a great deal to do before you can get hold of 
the juages. We did not see the Abbe de Grancey for three 
weeks, he was so busy ! ” 

But the very existence of the chapter was involved,” said 
Monsieur de Watteville ; “ and then the archbishop’s pride, his 
conscience, everything that makes up the life of the priesthood, 
were at stake. That Savaron does not know what he did for 
the chapter ! He saved it ! ” 

Listen to me,” said his daughter in his ear, ‘Gf you 
secure Monsieur de Savaron, you will gain your suit, won’t 
you? Well, then, let me advise you. You cannot get at 
Monsieur Savaron excepting through Monsieur de Grancey. 
Take my word for it, and let us together talk to the dear abb6, 
without my mother’s presence at the interview, for I know a 
way of persuading him to bring the lawyer to us.” 

“ It will be very difficult to avoid mentioning it to your 
mother! ” 

The Abbe de Grancey will settle that afterwards. But 
just make up your mind to promise your vote to Monsieur 
Savaron at the next election, and you will see ! ” 

Go to the election ! take the oath? ” cried the Baron de 
Watteville. 

What then? ” said she. 


Z 


374 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


And what will your mother say? ” 

She may even desire you to do it,” replied Rosalie, 
knowing as she did from Albert's letter to Leopold how deeply 
the vicar-general had pledged himself. 

Four days after, the Abbe de Grancey called very early one 
morning on Albert de Savaron, having announced his visit the 
day before. The old priest had come to win over the great 
lawyer to the house of the Wattevilles, a proceeding which 
shows how much tact and subtlety Rosalie must have employed 
in an underhand way. 

‘‘What can I do for you. Monsieur le Vicaire-General ? ” 
asked Savaron. 

The abbe, who told his story with admirable frankness, was 
coldly heard by Albert. 

“ Monsieur rAbbe,” said he, “ it is out of the question that 
I should defend the interests of the Wattevilles, and you shall 
understand why. My part in this town is to remain perfectly 
neutral. I will display no colors; I must remain a mystery 
till the eve of my election. Now, to plead for the Wattevilles 
would mean nothing in Paris, but here ! Here, where every¬ 
thing is discussed, I should be supposed by every one to be an 
ally of your Faubourg Saint-Germain.” 

“ What! do you suppose that you can remain unknown on 
the day of the election, when the candidates must oppose each 
other ? It must then become known that your name is Savaron 
Re Savarus, that you have held the appointment of master of 
appeals, that you supported the Restoration ! ” 

“ On the day of the election,” said Savaron, “ I will be all 
I am expected to be; and I intend to speak at the preliminary 
meetings.” 

“ If you have the support of Monsieur de Watteville and 
his party, you will get a hundred votes in a mass, and far 
more to be trusted than those on which you rely. It is always 
possible to produce division of interests; convictions are in¬ 
separable.” 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


375 


The deuce is in it! ” said Savaron. I am attached to 
you, and I could do a great deal for you, father! Perhaps we 
may compound with the devil. Whatever Monsieur de Watte- 
ville’s business may be, by engaging Girardet, and prompting 
him, it will be possible to drag the proceedings out till the 
elections are over. I will not undertake to plead till the day 
after I am returned.” 

Do this one thing,” said the abbe. “ Come to the Hotel 
de Rupt : there is a young person of nineteen there who, one 
of these days, will have a hundred thousand francs a year, 

and you can .seem to be paying your court to her-” 

Ah ! the young lady I sometimes see in the kiosk?” 

“Yes, Mademoiselle Rosalie,” replied the Abbe de Gran- 
cey. “ You are ambitious. If she takes a fancy to you, 
you may be everything an ambitious man can wish—who 
knows? A minister perhaps. A man can always be a min¬ 
ister who adds a hundred thousand francs a year to your 
amazing talents.” 

“ Monsieur I’Abbe, if Mademoiselle de Watteville had three 
times her fortune, and adored me into the bargain, it would 
be impossible that I should marry her-” 

“ You are married ? ” exclaimed the abbe. 

“ Not in church nor before the mayor, but morally speak¬ 
ing,” said Savaron. 

“ That is even worse when a man cares about it as you seem 
to care,” replied the abbe. “Some things that are done 
can be undone. Do not stake your fortune and your pros¬ 
pects on a woman’s liking, any more than a wise man counts 
on a dead man’s shoes before starting on his way.” 

“ Let us say no more about Mademoiselle de Watteville,” 
said Albert gravely, “and agree as to the facts. At your 
desire—for I have a regard and respect for you—I will appear 
for Monsieur de Watteville, but after the elections. Until 
then Girardet must conduct the case under my instructions. 
That is the utmost I can do.” 




376 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


“ But there are questions involved which can only be set¬ 
tled after careful inspection of the localities,” said the vicar- 
general. 

‘‘ Girardet can go,” said Savaron. I cannot allow myself, 
in the face of a town I know so well, to take any step which 
might compromise the supreme interests that lie beyond my 
election.” 

The abbe left Savaron after giving him a keen look, in 
which he seemed to be laughing at the young athlete’s uncom¬ 
promising politics, while admiring his firmness. 

‘‘Ah! I would have dragged my father into a lawsuit—I 
would have done anything to get him here! ” cried Rosalie 
to herself, standing in the kiosk and looking at the lawyer 
in his room, the day after Albert’s interview with the abbe, 
who had reported the result to her father. “ I would have 
committed any mortal sin, and you will not enter the Watte- 
villes’ drawing-room ; I may not hear your fine voice ! You 
make conditions wheri your help is required by the Watte- 
villes and the Rupts ! Well, God knows, I meant to be con¬ 
tent with these small joys; with seeing you, hearing you 
speak, going with you to Les Rouxey, that your presence might 
to me make the place sacred. That was all I asked. But 
now—now I mean to be your wife. Yes, yes; look at Ler 
portrait, at her drawing-room, her bedroom, at the four sides 
of her villa, the points of view from her gardens. You expect 
her statue ? I will make her marble herself towards you ! 
After all, the woman does not love. Art, science, books, 
singing, music, have absorbed half her senses and her intelli¬ 
gence. She is old, too; she is past thirty; my Albert will 
not be happy ! ” 

“ What is the matter that you stay here, Rosalie? ” asked 
her mother, interrupting her reflections. “ Monsieur de 
Soulas is in the drawing-room, and he observed your attitude, 
which certainly betrays more thoughtfulness than is due at 
your age.” 





ALBERT SAVARON. 


377 


**Then is Monsieur de Soulas a foe to thought?’’ asked 
Rosalie. 

“ Then you were thinking? ” said Madame de Watteville. 

Why, yes, mamma.” 

‘‘ Why, no 1 you were not thinking. You were staring at 
that lawyer’s window with an attention that is neither becom¬ 
ing nor decent, and which Monsieur de Soulas, of all men, 
ought never to have observed.” 

Why ? ” said Rosalie. 

“It is time,” said the Baroness, “that you should know 
what our intentions are. Amedee likes you, and you will not 
be unhappy as Comtesse de Soulas.” 

Rosalie, as white as a lily, made no reply, so completely 
was she stupefied by contending feelings. And yet, in the 
presence of the man she had this instant begun to hate vehe¬ 
mently, she forced the kind of smile which a ballet-dancer 
puts on for the public. Nay, she could even laugh ; she had 
the strength to conceal her rage, which presently subsided, 
for she was determined to make use of this fat simpleton to 
further her designs. 

“ Monsieur Amedee,” said she, at a moment when her 
mother was walking ahead of them in the garden, affecting to 
leave the young people together, “ were you not aware that 
Monsieur Albert Savaron de Savarus is a Legitimist ? ” 

“ A Legitimist ? ” 

“ Until 1830 he was master of appeals to the Council of 
State, attached to the Supreme Ministerial Council, and in 
fiivor with the Dauphin and Dauphiness. It would be very 
good of you to say nothing against him, but it would be 
better still if you would attend the election this year, carry 
the day, and hinder that poor Monsieur de Chavoncourt from 
representing the town of Besan^on.” 

“ What sudden interest have you in this Savaron ? ” 

“ Monsieur Albert Savaron de Savarus, the natural son of 
the Comte de Savarus—pray keep the secret of my indis- 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


S7S 

cretion—if he is returned deputy, will be our advocate in the 
suit about Les Rouxey. Les Rouxey, my father tells me, will be 
my property; I intend to live there, it is a lovely place ! I 
should be broken-hearted at seeing that fine piece of the great 
de Watteville’s work destroyed.” 

“The devil!” thought Amedee, as he left the house. 
“ The heiress is not such a fool as her mother thinks her.” 

Monsieur de Chavoncourt is a Royalist, of the famous 221. 
Hence, from the day after the revolution of July, he always 
preached the salutary doctrine of taking the oaths and resist¬ 
ing the present order of things, after the pattern of the 
Tories against the Whigs in England. This doctrine was not 
acceptable to the Legitimists, who, in their defeat, had the 
wit to divide in their opinions, and to trust to the force of 
inertia, and to Providence. Monsieur de Chavoncourt was 
not wholly trusted by his own party, but seemed to the 
Moderates the best man to choose; they preferred the triumph 
of his half-hearted opinions to the acclamation of a Repub¬ 
lican who should combine the votes of the enthusiasts and 
the patriots. 

Monsieur de Chavoncourt, highly respected in Besan^on, 
was the representative of an old parliamentary family ; his 
fortune, of about fifteen thousand francs a year, was not an 
offense to anybody, especially as he had a son and three 
daughters. With such a family, fifteen thousand francs a year 
are a mere nothing. Now when, under these circumstances, 
the father of the family is above bribery, it would be hard if 
the electors did not esteem him. Electors wax enthusiastic 
over a beau ideal of parliamentary virtue, just as the audience 
in the pit do at the representation of the generous sentiments 
they so little practice. 

Madame de Chavoncourt, at this time a woman of forty, 
was one of the beauties of Besangon. While the Chamber 
was sitting, she lived meagrely in one of their country places 
to recoup herself by economy for Monsieur de Chavoncourt’s 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


379 


expenses in Paris. In the winter she received very creditably 
once a week, on Tuesdays, understanding her business as mis¬ 
tress of the house. Young Chavoncourt, a youth of two-and- 
twenty, and another young gentleman, named Monsieur de 
Vauchelles, no richer than Amedee and his school-friend, 
were his intimate allies. They made excursions together to 
Granvelle, and sometimes went out shooting; they were so 
well-known to be inseparable that they were invited to the 
country together. 

Rosalie, who was intimate with the Chavoncourt girls, 
knew that the three young men had no secrets from each 
other. She reflected that if Monsieur dc Soulas should repeat 
her words, it would be to his two companions. Now, Mon¬ 
sieur de Vauchelles had his matrimonial plans, as Amedee had 
his; he wished to marry Victoire, the eldest of the Chavon- 
courts, on whom an old aunt was to settle an estate worth 
seven thousand francs a year, and a hundred thousand francs 
in hard cash, when the contract should be signed. Victoire 
was this aunt’s god-daughter and favorite niece. Conse¬ 
quently, young Chavoncourt and his friend Vauchelles would 
be sure to warn Monsieur de Chavoncourt of the danger he 
was in from Albert’s candidature. 

But this did not satisfy Rosalie. She sent the pr6fet of the 
department a letter written with her left hand, signed A 
friend to Louis Philippe in which she informed him of the 
secret intentions of Monsieur Albert Savaron, pointing out 
the serious support a Royalist orator might give to Berryer, 
and revealing to him the deeply artful course pursued by the 
lawyer during his two years’ residence at Besan^on. The 
pr^fet was a capable man, a personal enemy of the Royalist 
party, devoted by conviction to the government of July—in 
short, one of those men of whom, in the Rue de Crenelle, 
the Minister of the Interior could say, We have a capital 
pr^fet at Besangon.” The prefet read the letter, and, in 
obedience to its instructions, he burnt it. 


380 


ALBERT SAVA ROM 


Rosalie aimed at preventing Albert’s election, so as to 
keep him five years longer at Besangon. 

At that time an election was a fight between parties, and in 
order to win, the ministry chose its ground by choosing the 
moment when it would give battle. The elections were there¬ 
fore not to take place for three months yet. When a man’s 
whole life depends on an election, the period that elapses 
between the issuing of the writs for convening the electoral 
bodies and the day fixed for their meetings is an interval 
during which ordinary vitality is suspended. Rosalie fully 
understood how much latitude Albert’s absorbed state would 
leave her during these three months. By promising Mariette 
—as she afterwards confessed—to take both her and Jerome 
into her service, she induced the maid to bring her all the 
letters Albert might send to Italy, and those addressed to him 
from that country. And all the time she was pondering these 
machinations, the extraordinary girl was working slippers for 
her father with the most innocent air in the world. She even 
made a greater display than ever of candor and simplicity, 
quite understanding how valuable that candor and innocence 
would be to her ends. 

My daughter grows quite charming! ” said Madame de 
Watteville. 

Two months before the election a meeting was held at the 
house of Monsieur Boucher senior, composed of the contractor 
who expected to get the work for the acqueduct for the Arcier 
waters; of Monsieur Boucher’s father-in-law; of Monsieur 
Granet, the influential man for whom Savaron had done a ser¬ 
vice, and who was to nominate him as a candidate; of Gir- 
ardet the lawyer; of the printer of the Eastern Review; and 
of the president of the Chamber of Commerce. In fact, the 
assembly consisted of twenty-seven persons in all, men who in 
the provinces are regarded as bigwigs. Each man represented 
on an average six votes, but in estimating their value they said 
ten, for men always begin by exaggerating their own influ- 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


381 


ence. Among these twenty-seven was one who was wholly 
devoted to the prefet, one false brother who secretly looked 
for some favor from the ministry, either for himself or for 
some one belonging to him. 

At this preliminary meeting, it was agreed that Savaron the 
•lawyer should be named as candidate, a motion received with 
such enthusiasm as no one looked for from Besangon. Albert, 
waiting at home for Alfred Boucher to fetch him, was chatting 
with the Abbe'de Grancey, who was interested in this absorb¬ 
ing ambition. Albert had appreciated the priest’s vast politi¬ 
cal capacities ; and the priest, touched by the young man’s 
entreaties, had been willing to become his guide and adviser 
in this culminating struggle. The chapter did not love Mon¬ 
sieur de Chavoncourt, for it was his wife’s brother-in-law, as 
president of the Tribunal, who had lost the famous suit for 
them in the lower court. 

‘‘You are betrayed, my dear fellow,” said the shrewd and 
worthy abb6, in that gentle, calm voice which old priests 
acquire. 

“Betrayed ! ” cried the lawyer, struck to the heart. 

“By whom I know not at all,” the priest replied. “But 
at the prefecture your plans are known, and your hand read 
like a book. At this moment I have no advice to give you. 
Such affairs need consideration. As for this evening, take 
the bull by the horns, anticipate the blow. Tell them all 
your previous life, and thus you will mitigate the effect of the 
discovery on the good folks of Besan§on.” 

“ Oh, I was prepared for it,” said Albert in a broken voice. 

“ You would not benefit by my advice; you had the oppor¬ 
tunity of making an impression at the Hotel de Rupt; you 
do not know the advantage you would have gained-” 

“What?” 

“The unanimous support of the Royalists, an immediate 
readiness to go to the election—in short, above a hundred 
votes. Adding to these what, among ourselves, we call the 



382 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


ecclesiastical vote, though you were not yet nominated, you 
were master of the votes by ballot. Under such circumstances, 
a man may temporize, may make his way-” 

Alfred Boucher when he came in, full of enthusiasm, to 
announce the decision of the preliminary meeting, found the 
vicar-general and the lawyer cold, calm, and grave. 

“Good-night, Monsieur 1 ’Abbe,” said Albert. “We will 
talk of your business at greater length when the elections are 
over. ’ ’ 

And he took Alfred’s arm, after pressing Monsieur de 
Grancey’s hand with meaning. The priest looked at the am¬ 
bitious man, whose face at that moment wore the lofty expres¬ 
sion which a general may have when he hears the first gun 
fired for a battle. He raised his eyes to heaven, and left the 
room, saying to himself, “ What a priest he would make! ” 

Eloquence is not at the bar. The pleader rarely puts forth 
the real powers of his soul; if he did, he would die of it in a 
few years. Eloquence is, nowadays, rarely in the pulpit; but 
it is found on certain occasions in the Chamber of Deputies, 
when an ambitious man stakes all to win all, or, stung by a 
myriad of darts, at a given moment bursts into speech. But it 
is still more certainly found in some privileged beings, at the 
inevitable hour when their claims must either triumph or be 
wrecked, and when they are forced to speak. Thus at this 
meeting, Albert Savaron, feeling the necessity of winning him¬ 
self some supporters, displayed all the faculties of his soul and 
the resources of his intellect. He entered the room well, 
without awkwardness or arrogance, without weakness, without 
cowardice, quite gravely, and was not dismayed at finding 
himself among twenty or thirty men. The news of the meet¬ 
ing and of its determination had already brought a few docile 
sheep to follow the bell. 

Before listening to Monsieur Boucher, who was about to 
deluge him with a speech announcing the decision of the 
Boucher Committee, Albert begged for silence, and, as he 



ALBERT SAVA ROM 


383 


shook hands with Monsieur Boucher, tried to warn him, by a 
sign, of an unexpected danger. 

My young friend, Alfred Boucher, has just announced to 
me the honor you have done me. But before that decision is 
irrevocable,” said the lawyer, “ I think that I ought to explain 
to you who and what your candidate is, so as to leave you free 
to take back your word if my declarations should disturb your 
conscience ! ’ ’ 

This exordium was followed by profound silence. Some 
of the men thought it showed a noble impulse. 

Albert gave a sketch of his previous career, telling them his 
real name, his action under the Restoration, and revealing him¬ 
self as a new man since his arrival atBesangon, while pledging 
himself for the future. This address held his hearers breath¬ 
less, it was said. These men, all with different interests, were 
spellbound by the brilliant eloquence that flowed at boiling 
heat from the heart and soul of this ambitious spirit. Admira¬ 
tion silenced reflection. Only one thing was clear—the thing 
which Albert wished to get into their heads— 

Was it not far better for the town to have one of those men 
who are born to govern society at large than a mere voting- 
machine ? A statesman carries power with him. A common' 
place deputy, however incorruptible, is but a conscience. 
What a glory for Provence to have found a Mirabeau, to 
return the only statesman since 1830 that the revolution of 
July had produced! 

Under the pressure of this eloquence, all the audience 
believed it great enough to become a splendid political instru¬ 
ment in the hands of their representative. They all saw in 
Albert Savaron, Savarus the great Minister. And, reading the 
secret calculations of his constituents, the clever candidate 
gave them to understand that they would be the first to enjoy 
the right of profiting by his influence. 

This confession of faith, this ambitious programme, this 
retrospect of his life and character was, according to the only 


384 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


man present who was capable of judging of Savaron (he has 
since become one of the leading men of Besangon), a master¬ 
piece of skill and of feeling, of fervor, interest, and fascina¬ 
tion. This whirlwind carried away the electors. Never had 
any man had such a triumph. But, unfortunately, speech, 
a weapon only for close warfare, has only an immediate effect. 
Reflection kills the word when the word ceases to overpower 
reflection. If the votes had then been taken, Albert’s name 
would undoubtedly have come out of the ballot-box. At the 
moment, he was conqueror. But he must conquer every day 
for two months. 

Albert went home quivering. The townsfolk had applauded 
him, and he had achieved the great point of silencing before¬ 
hand the malignant talk to which his early career might give 
rise. The commercial interest of Besangon had unanimously 
nominated the lawyer, Albert Savaron de Savarus, as its 
candidate. 

Alfred Boucher’s enthusiasm, at first infectious, presently 
became blundering. 

Tlie prefet, alarmed by this success, set to work to count 
the ministerial votes, and contrived to have a secret interview 
with Monsieur de Chavoncourt, so as to effect a coalition in 
their common interests. Every day, without Albert being 
able to discover how, the voters in the Boucher Committee 
diminished in number. 

Nothing could resist the slow grinding of the prefecture. 
Three or four clever men would say to Albert’s clients, Will 
the deputy defend you and win your lawsuits? Will he give 
you advice, draw up your contracts, arrange your compromises? 
He will be your slave for five years longer, if, instead of 
returning him to the Chamber, you only hold out the hope 
of his going there five years hence.” 

This calculation did Savaron all the more mischief, because 
the wives of some of the merchants had already made it. 
The parties interested in the matter of the bridge and that of 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


385 


the water from Arcier could not hold out against a talking-to 
from a clever ministerialist, who proved to them that their 
safety lay at the prefecture, and not in the hands of an ambi¬ 
tious man. Each day was a check for Savaron, though each 
day the battle was led by him and fought by his lieutenants— 
a battle of words, speeches, and proceedings. He dared not 
go to the vicar-general, and the vicar-general never showed 
himself. Albert rose and went to bed in a fever, his brain 
on fire. 

At last the day dawned of the first struggle, practically the 
show of hands ; the votes are counted, the candidates estimate 
their chances, and clever men can prophesy their failure or 
success. It is a decent hustings, without the mob, but for¬ 
midable ; agitation, though it is not allowed any physical 
display, as it is in England, is not the less profound. The 
English fight these battles with their fists, the French with 
hard words. Our neighbors have a scrimmage, the French 
try their fate by cold combinations calmly worked out. This 
particular political business is carried out in opposition to the 
character of the two nations. 

The Radical party named their candidate ; Monsieur de 
Chavoncourt came forward; then Albert appeared, and was 
accused by the Chavoncourt Committee and the Radicals of 
being an uncompromising man of the Right, a second Berryer. 
The ministry had their candidate, a stalking-horse, useful 
only to receive the purely ministerial votes. The votes, thus 
divided, gave no result. The Republican candidate had 
twenty, the Ministry got fifty, Albert had seventy. Monsieur 
de Chavoncourt obtained sixty-seven. But the pr^fet’s party 
had perfidiously made thirty of its most devoted adherents 
vote for Albert, so as to deceive the enemy. The votes for 
Monsieur de Chavoncourt, added to the eighty votes—the 
real number—at the disposal of the prefecture would carry 
the election, if only the prefet could succeed in gaining over 
a few of the Radicals. A hundred and sixty votes were not 
25 


386 


ALBERT SA VAR ON. 


recorded: those of Monsieur de Grancey’s following and the 
Legitimists. 

The show of hands at an election, like a dress rehearsal at 
a theatre, is the most deceptive thing in the world. Albert 
Savaron came home, putting a brave face on the matter, but 
half-dead. He had had the wit, the genius, or the good-luck 
to gain, within the last fortnight, two staunch supporters— 
Girardet’s father-in-law and a very shrewd old merchant to 
whom Monsieur de Grancey had sent him. These two worthy 
men, his self-appointed spies, affected to be Albert’s most 
ardent opponents in the hostile camp. Towards the end of 
the show of hands they informed Savaron, through the 
medium of Monsieur Boucher, that thirty voters, unknown, 
were secretly working against him in his party, playing the 
same sharp trick that they were playing for his benefit on the 
other side. 

A criminal marching to execution could not suffer as 
Albert suffered as he went home from the hall where his fate 
was at stake. The despairing lover could endure no compan¬ 
ionship. He walked through the streets alone, between eleven 
o’clock and midnight. At one in the morning, Albert, to 
whom sleep had been unknown for the past three days, was 
sitting in his library in a deep armchair, his face as pale as if 
he were dying, his hands hanging limp, in a forlorn attitude 
worthy of the Magdalen. Tears hung on his long lashes, 
tears that dim the eyes, but do not fall; fierce thought drinks 
them up, the fire of the soul consumes them. Alone, he might 
weep. And then, under the kiosk, he saw a white figure, 
which reminded him of Francesca. 

And for three months I have had no letter from her ! 
What has become of her? I have not written for two months, 
but I warned her. Is she ill ? Oh my love ! My life ! Will 
you ever know what I have gone through ? What a wretched 
constitution is mine ! Have I an aneurism?” he asked him¬ 
self, feeling his heart beat so violently that its pulses seemed 





f'nfT. 


^ I 



' ' ■ Jvt 

•' ^ .*?• iZ •' r.’.^i^'' 

«4p548?>s-!r, 

t\ r , / . r,**' 

p»‘’^ “- . ^ ■* ''jt. 

«. I / ¥*t . 

evg- <i * 


'*JW ' 







■;i «. %f 


nal7 •• 171,1 

' -Vv 


,>■ 'v, f ’^•'j'*-^' 

* r . ‘ ^ - /w' - 


^ \£ 




■ “W-:: 




i^.: V 'll’ 

'jbr 








« ’. * • '■,» 


if^r ^ 




'’«' ■, Ja: 

••* ■ ii 


• «♦ji-»L''‘ "J '< 






>r -• 




^ V, 








»'V*. ‘.L* 


L^i 








1 .’ * . .^ 


• V 


‘ k 


\ - 


Wt’.^ ' 




keC'**' - ‘V -'n'V '■ .' 








V V 


»^ * 




v-^n 


«» •• “M 




* w, 






^ff 




ii..? 


fe 


. i i. 


if 


'W , 


liL* 


,v 






»r: •!Wiw>'i 




i'w 










■ lijSLv. " 

>>K ^ 


14.'^ 


»T * , - * - . • w . .1 


♦ I' 




/ 9 


A f V .y. 


«A 


• I ^ - 


• i '-k 3. ' 

.•J ^ \ 


i 


7;a 




'■‘■■'Si! 




^♦Pt ■^^,-- V •" 


:W. 




n 


a) • > 

:^vi 




,;*^- ■ . y:^* -] ijf.'.y' 

,'■ ■- . ■' 

V .V ' ^-■- ’ 







l-J.' 

si? 



■^'1 


*' '1'» *. ’f ■ 4'.^ 






^ v,< 

1^ ■/ • • . ^ 

f •,' •'V t 

■ .* i--*. 

■■ jf. - A.%.. A ..A 




, V 




uj*!* 

iie;> fTf **«i'i 


I.;, fH 








111 


M 






- 




* # 




t'. 






^■j 


»' * 


*/ 




5^- 


^ • 


. V r" 




, T 


*>ifc, 1 \‘f* >' 


* 4 .»[* _u '■» >. 

/ ■/U^ 1. . . I i 










^ 4 




■*; 

• 1 


iSa 


h 



lM,r^ 3 tft.^’^'^i 






|2jOT-r 

WtBS^ J^HIsk 



1 i''‘'‘ 

1 / ' t: 



iKt 







rSuMH^Pvs^H 

iEM^ur‘ 








































p > 


'"she was one of those women who are born to reign I 


y : 


tf 


% 4 r * 




r ’ 




- 



tV f 




/ I 


•>i 


r 

I 


.«*• V 


'./ • 
V 


iiS 


*ri 




••7,1 

* ' ■#■ ■ . ^ 

t 

fi ^ V 

Kr^ 



tJSr ,/ 







4 * \f I 

> 


ri/'V "f- >h'55-'4| 

W :K *C ’tK-T 

' • >. t ■' ' ,.’-C 

' ■* ... » V 





* "* f * ' 

. U 




H ##* 


•iP • . -I 


h 0 ’’ . 


* ^ 


•> »•••.. 





>/ 


4 .- .- V ^ 


riS/'M * ^ ‘ 



^•m 


N 



• V 




f 4? * • 


t 


a 

« , -'J ’ 


v ' W **,’- tj 


f ^ ^ 




' fr 


^ . J . _ ^In 




4 . 


nf 

Sr -:#. 




X t ^ 


• ■ 

:i_ ■. \ 


» ll*v 




t:, * Jt^ 


it 


it 


. 




«t 









ALBERT SAVA RON. 


Z$!7 


audible in the silence like little grains of sand dropping on a 
big drum, 

At this moment three distinct taps sounded on his door; 
Albert hastened to open it, and almost fainted with joy at 
seeing the vicar-general’s cheerful and triumphant mien. 
Without a word, he threw his arms round the Abbe de Grancey, 
held him fast, and clasped him closely, letting his head fall on 
the old man’s shoulder. He was a child again; he cried as 
he had cried on hearing that Francesca Soderini was a married 
woman. He betrayed his weakness to no one but to this 
priest, on whose face shone the light of hope. The priest had 
been sublime, and as shrewd as he was sublime. 

‘‘Forgive me, dear abbe, but you come at one of those 
moments when the man vanishes, for you are not to think me 
vulgarly ambitious.” 

“ Oh ! I know,” replied the abb6. “ You wrote ^Ambition 
for lavs's sake!' Ah! my son, it was love in despair that 
made me a priest in 1786, at the age of two-and-twenty. In 
1788 I was in charge of a parish. I know life. I have refused 
three bishoprics already ; I mean to die at Besangon.” 

“ Come and see her ! ” cried Savaron, seizing a candle, and 
leading the abb6 into the handsome room where hung the 
portrait of the Duchess d’Argaiolo, which he lighted up. 

“ She is one of those women who are born to reign I ” said 
the vicar-general, understanding how great an affection Albert 
showed him by this mark of confidence. “ But there is pride 
on that brow; it is implacable ; she would never forgive an 
insult ! It is the Archangel Michael, the angel of execution, 
the inexorable angel. ‘ All or nothing ’ is the motto of this 
type of angel. There is something divinely pitiless in that 
head.” 

“ You have guessed well,” cried Savaron. “ But, my dear 
abb6, for more than twelve years now she has reigned over 
my life, and I have not a single thought for which to blame 
myself-" 


m 


ALBERT SAFA RON. 


Ah ! if you could only say the same of God ! ** said the 
priest with simplicity. ‘‘Now, to talk of your affairs. For 
ten days I have been at work for you. If you are a real poli¬ 
tician, this time you will follow my advice. You would not 
be where you are now if you would have gone to the Watte- 
villes when I first told you. But you must go there to¬ 
morrow ; I will take you in the evening. The Rouxey estates 
are in danger; the case must be defended within three days. 
The election will not be over in three days. They will take 
good care not to appoint examiners the first day. There 
will be several voting days, and you will be elected by 
ballot-” 

“ How can that be? ” asked Savaron. 

“ By winning the Rouxey lawsuit you will gain eighty 
Legitimist votes; add them to the thirty I can command, and 
you have a hundred and ten. Then, as twenty remain to 
you of the Boucher Committee, you will have a hundred and 
thirty in all.” 

“Well,” said Albert, “we must get seventy-five more.” 

“Yes,” said the priest, “ since all the rest are ministerial. 
But, my son, you have two hundred votes, and the prefecture 
no more than a hundred and eighty.” 

“ I have two hundred votes ? ” said Albert, standing stupid 
with amazement, after starting to his feet as if shot up by a 
spring. 

“You have those of Monsieur de Chavoncourt,” said the abbA 

“How?” said Albert. 

“You will marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt.” 

“ Never! ” 

“You will marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt,” 
the priest repeated coldly. 

“ But you see—she is inexorable,” said Albert, pointing to 
Francesca. 

“ You will marry Mademoiselle Sidonie de Chavoncourt/' 
said the abb6 calmly for the third time. 



ALBERT SAVaRON. 


S89 


This time Albert understood. The vicar-general would not 
be implicated in the scheme which at last smiled on the 
despairing politician. A word more would have compromised 
the priest’s dignity and honor. 

“To-morrow evening at the Hotel de Rupt you will meet 
Madame de Chavoncourt and her second daughter. You can 
thank her beforehand for what she is going to do for you, and 
tell her that your gratitude is unbounded, that you are hers 
body and soul, that henceforth your future is that of her 
family. You are quite disinterested, for you have so much 
confidence in yourself that you regard the nomination as 
deputy as a sufficient fortune. 

“You will have a struggle with Madame de Chavoncourt; 
she will want you to pledge your word. All your future life, 
my son, lies in that evening. But, understand clearly, I have 
nothing to do with it. I am answerable only for the Legitimist 
voters; I have secured Madame de Watteville, and that means 
all the aristocracy of Besan^on. Amed^e de Soulas and Vau- 
chelles, who will both vote for you, have won over the young 
men; Madame de Watteville will get the old ones. As to 
my electors, they are infallible.” 

“And who on earth has gained over Madame de Chavon¬ 
court?” asked Savaron. 

“ Ask me no questions,” replied the abbe. “ Monsieur de 
Chavoncourt, who has three daughters to marry, is not capable 
of increasing his wealth. Though Vauchelles marries the 
eldest without anything from her father, because her old aunt 
is to settle something on her, what is to become of the two 
others? Sidonie is sixteen, and your ambition is as good as 
a gold mine. Some one has told Madame de Chavoncourt 
that she will do better by getting her daughter married than 
by sending her husband to waste his money in Paris. That 
some one manages Madame de Chavoncourt, and Madame de 
Chavoncourt manages her husband.” 

“ That is enough, my dear abb6. I understand. When 


S90 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


once I am returned as deputy, I have somebody’s fortune to 
make, and by making it large enough I shall be released from 
my promise. In me you have a son, a man who will owe his 
happiness to you. Great heavens! what have I done to 
deserve so true a friend ?” 

“You won a triumph for the chapter,” said the vicar- 
general, smiling. “ Now, as to all this, be as secret as the 
tomb. We are nothing, we have done nothing. If we were 
known to have meddled in election matters, we should be 
eaten up alive by the Puritans of the Left—who do worse— 
and blamed by some of our own party, who want everything. 
Madame de Chavoncourt has no suspicion of my share in all 
this. I have confided in no one but Madame de Watteville, 
whom we may trust as we trust ourselves.” 

“I will bring the Duchess to you to be blessed ! ” cried 
Savaron. 

After seeing out the old priest, Albert went to bed in the 
swaddling-clothes of power. 

Next evening, as may well be supposed, by nine o’clock 
Madame la Baronne de Watteville’s rooms were crowded by the 
aristocracy of Besangon in convocation extraordinary. They 
were discussing the exceptional step of going to the poll, to 
oblige the daughter of the de Rupts. It was known that the 
former master of appeals, the secretary of one of the most 
faithful ministers under the elder branch, was to be presented 
that evening. Madame de Chavoncourt was there with her 
second daughter Sidonie, exquisitely dressed, while her elder 
sister, secure of her lover, had not indulged in any of the arts 
of the toilet. In country towns these little things are re¬ 
marked. The Abb6 de Grancey’s fine and clever head was 
to be seen moving from group to group, listening to every¬ 
thing, seeming to be apart from it all, but uttering those 
incisive phrases which sum up a question and direct the issue. 

“If the elder branch were to return,” said he to an old 


ALBERT SAVA ROM. 


391 


statesman of seventy, “what politicians would they find?” 
“ Berryer, alone on his bench, docs not know which way to 
turn \ if he had sixty votes, he would often scotch the wheels 
of the government and upset ministries!” “The Due de 
Fitz-James is to be nominated at Toulouse.” “You will 
enable Monsieur de Watteville to win his lawsuit.” “ If you 
vote for Monsieur Savaron, the Republicans will vote with you 
rather than with the Moderates 1 ” etc., etc. 

At nine o’clock Albert had not arrived. Madame de 
Watteville was disposed to regard such delay as an imperti¬ 
nence. 

“My dear Baroness,” said Madame de Chavoncourt, “do 
not let such serious issues turn on such a trifle. The varnish 
on his boots is not dry—or a consultation, perhaps, detains 
Monsieur de Savaron.” 

Rosalie shot a side glance at Madame de Chavoncourt. 

“ She is very lenient to Monsieur de Savaron,” she whis¬ 
pered to her mother. 

“You see,” said the Baroness, with a smile, “there is a 
question of a marriage between Sidonie and Monsieur de 
Savaron.” 

Mademoiselle de Watteville hastily went to a window look¬ 
ing out over the garden. 

At ten o’clock Albert de Savaron had not yet appeared. 
The storm that threatened now burst. Some of the gentlemen 
sat down to cards, finding the thing intolerable. The Abbe 
de Grancey, who did not know what to think, went to the 
window where Rosalie was hidden, and exclaimed aloud in 
his amazement, “ He must be dead I ” 

The vicar-general stepped out into the garden, followed 
by Monsieur de Watteville and his daughter, and they all 
three went up to the kiosk. In Albert’s rooms all was dark; 
not a light was to be seen. 

“Jerome! ” cried Rosalie, seeing the servant in the yard 
below. The abb6 looked at her with astonishment. “ Where 


m 


ALBERT SAVARON 


in the world is your master? ” she asked the man, who came 
to the foot of the wall. 

“ Gone—in a post-chaise, mademoiselle.” 

‘‘ He is ruined ! ” exclaimed the Abbe de Grancey, or he 
is happy ! ’ ’ 

The joy of triumph was not so effectually concealed on 
Rosalie’s face that the vicar-general could not detect it. He 
affected to see nothing. 

What can this girl have had to do with this business? ” 
he asked himself. 

They all three returned to the drawing-room, where Mon¬ 
sieur de Watteville announced the strange, the extraordinary, 
the prodigious news of the lawyer’s departure, without any 
reason assigned for his evasion. By half-past eleven only 
fifteen persons remained, among them Madame de Chavan- 
court and the Abbe de Godenars, another vicar-general, a 
man of about forty, who hoped for a bishopric ; the two Cha- 
voncourt girls and Monsieur de Vauchelles, the Abbe de 
Grancey, Rosalie, Amedee de Soulas, and a retired magis¬ 
trate, one of the most influential members of the upper circle 
of Besangon, who had been very eager for Albert’s election. 
The Abbe de Grancey sat down by the Baroness in such a 
position as to watch Rosalie, whose face, usually pale, wore a 
feverish flush. 

“ What can have happened to Monsieur de Savaron ? ” said 
Madame de Chavoncourt. 

At this moment a servant in livery brought in a letter fo 
the Abb6 de Grancey on a silver tray. 

‘‘Pray read it,” said the Baroness de Watteville, with 
manifest interest. 

The vicar-general read the letter; he saw Rosalie suddenly 
turn as white as her kerchief. 

“ She recognizes the writing,” said he to himself, after 
glancing at the girl over his spectacles. He folded up the 
letter, and calmly put it in his pocket without a word. In 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


393 


three minutes he had met three looks from Rosalie which were 
enough to make him guess everything. 

*‘She is in love with Albert Savaron ! ” thought the vicar- 
general. 

He rose and took leave. He was going towards the door 
when, in the next room, he was overtaken by Rosalie, who 
said— 

Monsieur de Grancey, it was from Albert! ” 

How do you know that it was his writing, to recognize it 
from so far ? ” 

The girl’s reply, caught as she was in the toils of her impa¬ 
tience and rage, seemed to the abbe sublime. 

‘‘I love him! What is the matter?” she said after a 
pause. 

He gives up the election.” 

Rosalie put her finger to her lip. 

‘‘I ask you to be as secret as if it were a confession,” 
said she before returning to the drawing-room. *‘If there 
is an end of the election, there is an end of the marriage with 
Sidonie.” 

In the morning, on her way to mass. Mademoiselle de Wat- 
teville heard from Mariette some of the circumstances which 
had prompted Albert’s disappearance at the most critical mo¬ 
ment of his life. 

Mademoiselle, an old gentleman from Paris arrived yes¬ 
terday morning at the Hotel National ; he came in his own 
carriage with four horses, and a courier in front, and a servant. 
Indeed, Jerome, who saw the carriage returning, declares he 
could only be a prince or a milord.'^ 

“ Was there a coronet on the carriage? ” asked Rosalie. 

I do not know,” said Mariette. Just as two was striking 
he came to call on Monsieur Savaron, and sent in his card; 
and when he saw it, Jerome says Monsieur turned as pale as a 
sheet, and said he was to be shown in. As he himself locked 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


the door, it is impossible to tell what the old gentleman and 
the lawyer said to each other ; but they were together above 
an hour, and then the old gentleman, with the lawyer, called 
up his servant. Jerome saw the servant go out again with an 
immense package, four feet long, which looked like a great 
painting on canvas. The old gentleman had in his hand a 
large parcel of papers. Monsieur Savaron was paler than 
death, and he, so proud, so dignified, was in a state to be 
pitied. But he treated the old gentleman so respectfully that 
he could not have been politer to the king himself. Jerome 
and Monsieur Albert Savaron escorted the gentleman to his 
carriage, which was standing with the horses in. The courier 
started on the stroke of three. 

“Monsieur Savaron went straight to the prefecture, and 
from that to Monsieur Gentillet, who sold him the old travel¬ 
ing carriage that used to belong to Madame de Saint-Vier 
before she died; then he ordered post-horses for six o’clock. 
He went home to pack; no doubt he wrote a lot of letters; 
finally, he settled everything with Monsieur Girardet, who 
went to him and stayed till seven. Jerome carried a note to 
Monsieur Boucher, with whom his master was to have dined; 
and then, at half-past seven, the lawyer set out, leaving 
Jerome with three months’ wages, and telling him to find 
another place. 

“ He left his keys with Monsieur Girardet, whom he took 
home, and at his house, Jerome says, he took a plate of soup, 
for at half-past seven Monsieur Girardet had not yet dined. 
When Monsieur Savaron got into the carriage again he looked 
like death. Jerome, who, of course, saw his master off, heard 
him tell the postillion ‘ The Geneva Road ! ’” 

“ Did Jerome ask the name of the stranger at the Hotel 
National ?” 

“As the old gentleman did not mean to stay, he was not 
asked for it. The servant, by his orders no doubt, pretended 
not to speak French.” 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


395 


** And the letter which came so late to the Abbe de Gran- 
cey?” said Rosalie. 

“It was Monsieur Girardet, no doubt, who ought to have 
delivered it; but Jerome says that poor Monsieur Girardet, 
who was much attached to lawyer Savaron, was as much upset 
as he was. So he who came so mysteriously, as Mademoiselle 
Galard says, is gone away just as mysteriously.” 

After hearing this narrative. Mademoiselle de Watteville 
fell into a brooding and absent mood, which everybody could 
see. It is useless to say anytning of the commotion that arose 
in Besan^on on the disappearance of Monsieur Savaron. It 
was understood that the prefect had obliged him with the 
greatest readiness by giving hfm at once a passport across the 
frontier, for he was thus quit of his only opponent. Next day 
Monsieur de Chavoncourt was carried to the top by a majority 
of a hundred and forty votes. 

“Jack is gone by the way he came,” said an elector on 
hearing of Albert Savaron’s flight. 

This event lent weight to the prevailing prejudice at 
Besan^on against strangers; indeed, two years previously they 
had received confirmation from the affair of the Republican 
newspaper. Ten days later Albert de Savaron was never 
spoken of again. Only three persons—Girardet the attorney, 
the vicar-general, and Rosalie—were seriously affected by his 
disappearance. Girardet knew that the white-haired stranger 
was Prince Soderini, for he had seen his card, and he told the 
vicar-general; but Rosalie, better informed than either of 
them, had known for three months past that the Due d’Argaiolo 
was dead. 

In the month of April, 1836, no one had had any news 
from or of Albert de Savaron. Jerome and Mariette were to 
be married, but the Baroness confidentially desired her maid 
to wait till her daughter was married, saying that the two 
weddings might take place at the same time. 

“It is time that Rosalie should be married,” said the 


896 


ALBERT SAFA RON. 


Baroness one day to Monsieur de Watteville. ‘‘ She is nine¬ 
teen, and she is fearfully altered in these last months." 
do not know what ails her," said the Baron. 

“When fathers do not know what ails their daughters, 
mothers can guess," said the Baroness; “we must get her 
married." 

“I am quite willing," said the Baron. “I shall give her 
Les Rouxey now that the court has settled our quarrel with the 
authorities of Riceys by fixing the boundary line at three 
hundred feet up the side of the Dent de Vilard. I am having 
a trench made to collect all the water and carry it into the 
lake. The village did not appeal, so the decision is final." 

“ It has never yet occurred to you," said Madame de 
Watteville, “ that this decision cost me thirty thousand francs 
handed over to Chantonnit. That peasant would take noth¬ 
ing else; he sold us peace. If you give away Les Rouxey, 
you will have nothing left," said the Baroness. 

“I do not need much," said the Baron; “I am breaking 
up." 

“ You eat like an ogre ! " 

“ Just so. But however much I may eat, I feel my legs 
get weaker and weaker-" 

“It is from working the lathe," said his wife. 

“ I do not know," said he. 

“We will marry Rosalie to Monsieur de Soulas; if you 
give her Les Rouxey, keep the life interest. I will give them 
fifteen thousand francs a year in the funds. Our children can 
live here; I do not see that they are much to be pitied." 

“ No. I shall give them Les Rouxey out and out. Rosalie 
is fond of Les Rouxey." 

“ You are a queer man with your daughter! It does not 
occur to you to ask me if I am fond of Les Rouxey." 

Rosalie, at once sent for, was informed that she was to 
marry Monsieur de Soulas one day early in the month of 
May. 



ALBERT SAVA RON. 


397 


“ I am very much obliged to you, mother, and to you too, 
father, for having thought of settling me ; but I do not mean 
to marry ; I am very happy with you.” 

“ Mere speeches 1 ” said the Baroness. ‘‘ You are not in 
love with Monsieur de Soulas, that is all.” 

If you insist on the plain truth, I will never marry Mon¬ 
sieur de Soulas-” 

‘‘Oh! the never of a girl of nineteen!” retorted her 
mother, with a bitter smile. 

“The of-Mademoiselle de Watteville,” said Rosalie 
with firm decision. “ My father, I imagine, has no intention 
of making me marry against my wishes?” 

“ No, indeed no! ” said the poor Baron, looking affection¬ 
ately at his daughter. 

“Very well!” said the Baroness, sternly controlling the 
rage of a bigot startled at finding herself unexpectedly defied, 
“ you yourself. Monsieur de Watteville, may take the respon¬ 
sibility of settling your daughter. Consider well. Made¬ 
moiselle, for if you do not marry to my mind you will get 
nothing out of me ! ” 

The quarrel thus begun between Madame de Watteville 
and her husband, who took his daughter’s part, went so far 
that Rosalie and her father were obliged to spend the summer 
at Les Rouxey; life at the Hotel de Rupt was unendurable. 
It thus became known in Besangon that Mademoiselle de 
Watteville had positively refused the Comte de Soulas. 

After their marriage Mariette and Jerome came to Les 
Rouxey to succeed Modinier in due time. The Baron re¬ 
stored and repaired the house to suit his daughter’s taste. 
When she heard that these improvements had cost about sixty 
thousand francs, and that Rosalie and her father were build¬ 
ing a conservatory, the Baroness understood that there was a 
leaven of spite in her daughter. The Baron purchased vari¬ 
ous outlying plots, and a little estate worth thirty thousand 
francs. Madame de Watteville was told that, away from her. 



398 


ALBERT SAVA RON, 


Rosalie showed masterly qualities, that she was taking steps to 
improve the value of Les Rouxey, that she had treated herself 
to a riding-habit and rode about \ her father, whom she made 
very happy, who no longer complained of his health, and who 
was growing fat, accompanied her in her expeditions. As the 
Baroness’ name-day drew near—her name was Louise—the 
vicar-general came one day to Les Rouxey, deputed, no doubt, 
by Madame de Watteville and Monsieur de Soulas, to nego¬ 
tiate a peace between the mother and daughter. 

“ That little Rosalie has a head on her shoulders,” said the 
folk of Besan^on. 

After handsomely paying up the ninety thousand francs 
spent on Les Rouxey, the Baroness allowed her husband a thou¬ 
sand francs a month to live on; she would not put herself in 
the wrong. The father and daughter were perfectly willing 
to return to Besan^on for the 15th of August, and to remain 
there till the end of the month. 

When, after dinner, the vicar-general took Mademoiselle de 
Watteville apart, to open the question of the marriage, by 
explaining to her that it was vain to think any more of 
Albert, of whom they had had no news for a year past, he 
was stopped at once by a sign from Rosalie. The strange girl 
took Monsieur de Grancey by the arm, and led him to a seat 
under a clump of rhododendrons, whence there was a view of 
the lake. 

“Listen, dear abbe,” said she. “You whom I love as 
much as my father, for you had an affection for my Albert, I 
must at last confess that I committed crimes to become his 
wife, and he must be my husband. Here ; read this.” 

She held out to him a number of the Gazette which she had 
in her apron pocket, pointing out the following paragraph 
under the date of Florence, May 25th: 

“ The wedding of Monsieur le Due de Rh^tore, eldest son 
of the Due de Chaulieu, the former ambassador, to Madame la 
Duchesse d’Argaiolo, nee Princess Soderini, was solemnized 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


309 


with great splendor. Numerous entertainments given in 
honor of the marriage are making Florence gay. The 
Duchess’ fortune is one of the finest in Italy, for the late 
Duke left her everything.” 

“ The woman he loved is married,” said she. divided 
them.” 

*‘You? How?” asked the abbe. 

Rosalie was about to reply, when she was interrupted by a 
loud cry from two of the gardeners, following on the sound 
of a body falling into the water; she started, and ran off 
screaming, Oh ! father ! ” The Baron had disappeared. 

In trying to reach a piece of granite on which he fancied 
he saw the impression of a shell, a circumstance which would 
have contradicted some system of geology. Monsieur de 
Watteville had gone down the slope, lost his balance, and 
slipped into the lake, which, of course, was deepest close 
under the roadway. The men had the greatest difficulty in 
enabling the Baron to catch hold of a pole pushed down at 
the place where the water was bubbling, but at last they 
pulled him out, covered with mud, in which he had sunk; he 
was getting deeper and deeper in, by dint of struggling. Mon¬ 
sieur de Watteville had dined heavily, digestion was in pro¬ 
gress, and was thus checked. 

When he had been undressed, washed, and put to bed, he 
was in such evident danger that two servants at once set out 
on horseback: one to ride to Bcsan9on, and the other to fetch 
the nearest doctor and surgeon. When Madame de Watte¬ 
ville arrived, eight hours later, with the first medical aid from 
Besan^on, they found Monsieur de Watteville past all hope, in 
spite of the intelligent treatment of the Rouxey doctor. The 
fright had produced serious effusion on the brain, and the 
shock to the digestion was helping to kill the poor man. 

This death, which would never have happened, said Madame 
de Watteville, if her husband had stayed at Besangon, was 
ascribed by her to her daughter’s obstinacy. She took an 


400 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


aversion for Rosalie, abandoning herself to grief and regrets 
that were evidently exaggerated. She spoke of the Baron as 
“ her dear lamb ! ” 

The last of the Wattevilles was buried on an island in the 
lake at Les Rouxey, where the Baroness had a little Gothic 
monument erected of white marble, like that called the tomb 
of Heloise at Pere-Lachaise. 

A month after this catastrophe the mother and daughter had 
settled in the Hotel de Rupt, where they lived in savage silence. 
Rosalie was suffering from real sorrow, which had no visible 
outlet; she accused herself of her father’s death, and she 
feared another disaster, much greater in her eyes, and very 
certainly her own work; neither Girardet the attorney nor 
the Abbe de Grancey could obtain any information con¬ 
cerning Albert. This silence was appalling. In a paroxysm 
of repentance she felt that she must confess to the vicar-general 
the horrible machinations by which she had separated Fran¬ 
cesca and Albert. They had been simple, but formidable. 
Mademoiselle de Watteville had intercepted Albert’s letters to 
the Duchess as well as that in which Francesca announced 
her husband’s illness, warning her lover that she could write 
to him no more during the time while she was devoted, as was 
her duty, to the care of the dying man. Thus, while Albert 
was wholly occupied with election matters, the Duchess had 
written him only two letters; one in which she told him that 
the Due d’Argaiolo was in danger, and one announcing her 
widowhood—two noble and beautiful letters, which Rosalie 
kept back. 

After several nights’ labor she succeeded in imitating 
Albert’s writing very perfectly. She had substituted three 
letters of her own writing for three of Albert’s, and the rough 
copies which she showed to the old priest made him shudder 
—the genius of evil was revealed in them to such perfection. 
Rosalie, writing in Albert’s name, had prepared the Duchess 
for a change in the Frenchman’s feelings, falsely representing 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


401 


him as faithless, and she had answered the news of the Due 
d’Argaiolo’s death by announcing the marriage ere long of 
Albert and Mademoiselle de Watteville. The two letters, 
intended to cross on the road, had, in fact, done so. The 
infernal cleverness with which the letters were written so much 
astonished the vicar-general that he read them a second time. 
Francesca, stabbed to the heart by a girl who wanted to kill 
love in her rival, had answered the last in these four words: 
“You are free. Farewell.” 

“ Purely moral crimes, which give no hold to human justice, 
are the most atrocious and detestable,” said the abbe severely. 
“God often punishes them on earth; herein lies the reason 
of the terrible catastrophes which to us seem inexplicable. Of 
all secret crimes buried in the mystery of private life, the most 
disgraceful is that of breaking the seal of a letter, or of reading 
it surreptitiously. Every one, whoever it may be, and urged 
by whatever reason, who is guilty of such an act has stained 
his honor beyond retrieving. 

“Do you not feel all that is touching, that is heavenly in 
the story of the youthful page, falsely accused, and carrying 
the letter containing the order for his execution, who sets out 
without a thought of ill, and whom Providence protects and 
saves—miraculously, we say ! But do you know wherein the 
miracle lies? Virtue has a glory as potent as that of innocent 
childhood. 

“ I say these things not meaning to admonish you,” said 
the old priest, with deep grief. “ I, alas ! am not your spirit¬ 
ual director; you are not kneeling at the feet of God ; I am 
your friend, appalled by dread of what your punishment may 
be. What has become of that unhappy Albert? Has he, 
perhaps, killed himself? There was tremendous passion 
under his assumption of calm. I understand now that old 
Prince Soderini, the father of the Duchess d’Argaiolo, came 
here to take back his daughter’s letters and portraits. This 
was the thunderbolt that fell on Albert’s head, and he went 


402 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


off, lao doubt, to try to justify himself. But how is it that in 
fourteen months he has given us no news of himself? ” 

Oh ! if I marry him, he will be so happy ! ” 

Happy? He does not love you. Besides, you have no 
great fortune to give him. Your mother detests you ; you 
made her a fierce reply which rankles, and which will be 
your ruin. When she told you yesterday that obedience was 
the only way to repair your errors, and reminded you of the 
need for marrying, mentioning Amedec—‘ If you are so fond 
of him, marry him yourself, mother! ’—Did you, or did you 
not, fling these words in her teeth? ” 

Yes,” said Rosalie. 

‘‘ Well, I know her,” Monsieur de Grancey went on. In 
a few months she will be Comtesse de Soulas ! She will be 
sure to have children; she will give Monsieur de Soulas forty 
thousand francs a year; she will benefit him in other ways, 
and reduce your share of her fortune as much as possible. 
You will be poor as long as she lives, and she is but eight-and- 
thirty! Your whole estate will be the land of Les Rouxey, 
and the small share left to you after your father’s legal debts 
are settled, if indeed, your mother should consent to forego 
her claims on Les Rouxey. From the point of view of mate¬ 
rial advantages, you have done badly for yourself; from the 
point of view of feeling, I imagine you have wrecked your 

life. Instead of going to your mother-” Rosalie shook 

her head fiercely. 

‘‘To your mother,” the priest went on, “ and to religion, 
where you would, at the first impulse of your heart, have 
found enlightenment, counsel and guidance, you chose to act 
in your own way, knowing nothing of life, and listening only 
to passion ! ’ ’ 

These words of wisdom terrified Mademoiselle de Watte- 
ville. 

“And what ought I to do now?” she asked after a brief 
pause. 



ALBERT SAVA RON. 


403 


** To repair your wrongdoing, you must ascertain its ex¬ 
tent,” said the abbe. 

Well, I will write to the only man who can know any¬ 
thing of Albert’s fate, Monsieur Leopold Mannequin, a notary 
in Paris, his friend from childhood.” 

Write no more, unless to do honor to truth,” said the 
vicar-general. Place the real and the false letters in my 
hands, confess everything in detail as though I were the keeper 
of your conscience, asking me how you may expiate your sins, 
and doing as I bid you. I shall see—for, above all things, 
restore this unfortunate man to his innocence in the eyes of the 
woman he had made his divinity on earth. Though he has 
lost his happiness, Albert must still hope for justification.” 

Rosalie promised to obey the abbe, hoping that the st ps 
he might take would perhaps end in bringing Albert back to 
her. 

Not long after Mademoiselle de Watteville’s confession a 
clerk came to Besan(;on from Monsieur Leopold Mannequin, 
armed with a power of attorney from Albert; he called first 
on Monsieur Girardet, begging his assistance in selling the 
house belonging to Monsieur Savaron. The attorney under¬ 
took to do this out of friendship for Albert. The clerk from 
Paris sold the furniture, and with the proceeds could repay 
some money owed by Savaron to Girardet, who, on the occa¬ 
sion of his inexplicable departure, had lent him five thousand 
francs while undertaking to collect his assets. When Girardet 
asked what had become of the handsome and noble pleader, 
to whom he had been much attached, the clerk replied that 
no one knew but his master, and that the notary had seemed 
greatly distressed by the contents of the last letter he had 
received from Monsieur Albert de Savaron. 

On hearing this, the vicar-general wrote to Leopold. This 
was the worthy notary’s reply: 


404 


ALBERT SAVARON. 


“To Monsieur I’Abbe de Grancey, Vicar-General of the 
Diocese of Besangon. 

“Paris, 

“ Alas, monsieur, it is in nobody’s power to restore Albert 
to the life of the world; he has renounced it. He is a novice 
in the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble. 
You know, better than I who have but just learned it, that on 
the threshold of that cloister everything dies. Albert, foresee¬ 
ing that I should go to him, placed the'general of the order be¬ 
tween my utmost efforts and himself. I know his noble soul 
well enough to be sure that he is the victim of some odious 
plot unknown to us ; but everything is at an end. The Duch- 
esse d’Argaiolo, now Puchesse de Rhetore, seems to me to 
have carried severity to an extreme. At Belgirate, which she 
had left when Albert flew thither, she had left instructions 
leading him to believe that she was living in London. From 
London Albert went in search of her to Naples, and from 
Naples to Rome, where she was now engaged to the Due de 
Rhetor6. When Albert succeeded in seeing Madame d’Ar¬ 
gaiolo, at Florence, it was at the ceremony of her marriage. 

“ Our poor friend swooned in church, and even when he was 
in danger of death he could never obtain any explanation from 
this woman, who must have had I know not what in her 
heart. For seven months Albert had traveled in pursuit of a 
cruel creature who thought it sport to escape him ; he knew 
not where or how to catch her. 

“ I saw him on his way through Paris ; and if you had seen 
him, as I did, you would have felt that not a word might be 
spoken about the Duchess, at the risk of bringing on an attack 
which might have wrecked his reason. If he had known what 
his crime was, he might have found means to justify himself; 
but being falsely accused of being married !—what could he 
do? Albert is dead, quite dead to the world. He loaged for 
rest; let us hope that the deep silence and prayer into which 
he has thrown himself may give him happiness in another 


ALBERT SAVA RON, 


405 


guise. You, monsieur, who have known him, must greatly 
pity him ; and pity his friends also. 

“ Yours, etc.” 

As soon as he received this letter the good vicar-general 
wrote to the general of the Carthusian order, and this was the 
letter he received from Albert Savaron : 

“Brother Albert to Monsieur I'Abbe de Grancey, Vicar- 

General of the Diocese of Besangon. 

“ La Grande Chartreuse. 

“ I recognized your tender soul, dear and well-beloved 
vicar-general, and your still youthful heart, in all that the 
reverend father general of our order has just told me. You 
have understood.the only wish that lurks in the depths of my 
heart so far as the things of the world are concerned—to get 
justice done to my feelings by her who has treated me so 
badly ! But before leaving me at liberty to avail myself of 
your offer, the general wanted to know that my vocation was 
sincere; he was so kind as to tell me his idea, on finding that 
I was determined to preserve absolute silence on this point. 
If I had yielded to the temptation to rehabilitate the man 
of the world, the friar would have been rejected by this monas¬ 
tery. Grace has certainly done her work ; but, though short, 
the struggle was not the less keen or the less painful. Is not 
this enough to show you that I could never return to the 
world. 

“ Hence my forgiveness, which you ask for the author of so 
much woe, is entire and without a thought of vindictiveness. 
I will pray to God to forgive that young lady as I forgive her, 
and as I shall beseech Him to give Madame de Rhetore a life 
of happiness. Ah ! whether it be death, or the obstinate 
hand of a young girl madly bent on being loved, or one of the 
blows ascribed to chance, must we not all obey God ? Sorrow 
in some souls makes a vast void through which the Divine 
voice rings. I learned too late the bearings of this life on 


406 


ALBERT SAVA RON. 


that which awaits us ; all in me is worn out; I could not serve 
in the ranks of the church militant, and I lay the remains of 
an almost extinct life at the foot of the altar. 

‘‘ This is the last time I shall ever write. You alone, who 
loved me, and whom I loved so well, could make me break 
the law of oblivion I imposed on myself when I entered these 
headquarters of Saint Bruno, but you are always especially 
named in the prayers of 

Brother Albert. 

“ November, 1836.” ^ 

“Everything is for the best, perhaps,” thought the Abbe 
de Grancey. 

When he showed this letter to Rosalie, who with a pious 
impulse kissed the lines which contained her forgiveness, he 
said to her— 

“Well, now that he is lost to you, will you not be recon¬ 
ciled to your mother and marry the Comte de Soulas? ” 

“Only if Albert should order it,” said she. 

“ But you see it is impossible to consult him. The general 
of the order would not allow it.” 

“ If I were to go to see him ? ” 

“No Carthusian sees any visitor. Besides, no woman but 
the Queen of France may enter a Carthusian monastery,” said 
the abbe. “ So you have no longer any excuse for not marry¬ 
ing young Monsieur de Soulas.” 

“ I do not wish to destroy my mother’s happiness,” retorted 
Rosalie. 

“ vSatan ! ” exclaimed the vicar-general. 

Towards the end of that winter the worthy Abbe de Grancey 
died. This good friend no longer stood between Madame 
de Watteville and her daughter, to soften the impact of those 
two iron wills. 

The event he had foretold took place. In the month of 
August, 1837, Madame de Watteville was married to Monsieur 
de Soulas in Paris, whither she went by Rosalie’s advice, the 


ALBERT SAVA BOAT. 


407 


girl making a show of kindness and sweetness to her mother. 
Madame de Watteville believed in this affection on the part 
of her daughter, who simply desired to go to Paris to give 
herself the luxury of a bitter revenge ; she thought of nothing 
but avenging Savaron by torturing her rival. 

Mademoiselle de Watteville had been declared legally of 
age; she was, in fact, not far from one-and-twenty. Her 
mother, to settle with her finally, had resigned her claims on 
Les Rouxey, and the daughter had signed a release for all the 
inheritance of the Baron de Watteville. Rosalie encouraged 
her mother to marry the Comte de Soulas and settle all her 
own fortune on him. 

Let us each be perfectly free,” she said. 

Madame de Soulas, who had been uneasy as to her daugh¬ 
ter’s intentions, was touched by this liberality, and made her 
a present of six thousand francs a year in the funds as con¬ 
science money. As the Comtesse de Soulas had an income 
of forty-eight thousand francs from her own lands, and was 
quite incapable of alienating them in order to diminish 
Rosalie’s share. Mademoiselle de Watteville was still a fortune 
to marry, of eighteen hundred thousand francs ; Les Rouxey, 
with the Baron’s additions, and certain improvements, might 
yield twenty thousand francs a year, besides the value of the 
house, rents, and preserves. So Rosalie and her mother, who 
soon adopted the Paris style and fashions, easily obtained 
introductions to the best society. The golden key—eighteen 
hundred thousand francs—embroidered on Mademoiselle de 
Watteville’s stomacher, did more for the Comtesse de Soulas 
than her pretentions a la de Rupt, her inappropriate pride, or 
even her rather distant great connections. 

In the month of February, 1838, Rosalie, who was eagerly 
courted by many young men, achieved the purpose which had 
brought her to Paris. This was to meet the Duchesse de 
Rh^tor6, to see this wonderful woman, and to overwhelm her 
with perennial remorse. Rosalie gave herself up to the most 


408 


ALBERT SAFA ROM 


bewildering elegance and vanities in order to face the Duchess 
on an equal footing. 

They first met at a ball given annually after 1830 for the 
benefit of the pensioners on the old Civil List. A young 
man, prompted by Rosalie, pointed her out to the Duchess, 
saying— 

“ There is a very remarkable young,-person, a strong-minded 
young lady too ! She drove a clever man into a monastery 
—the Grande Chartreuse—a man of immense capabilities, 
Albert de Savaron, whose career she wrecked. She is Made¬ 
moiselle de Watteville, the famous Besan^on heiress-” 

The Duchess turned pale. Rosalie’s eyes met hers with 
one of those flashes which, between woman and woman, are 
more fatal than the pistol-shots of a duel. Francesca Soderini, 
wlio had suspected that Albert might be innocent, hastily 
quitted the ball-room, leaving the speaker at his wits’ end to 
guess what terrible blow he had inflicted on the beautiful 
Duchesse de Rhetore. 

“ If you want to hear more about Albert, come to the 
opera ball on Tuesday with a marigold in your hand.” 

This anonymous note, sent by Rosalie to the Duchess, 
brought the unhappy Italian to the ball, where Mademoiselle 
de Watteville placed in her hand all Albert’s letters, with that 
written to Leopold Hannequin by the vicar-general, and the 
notary’s reply, and even that in which she had written her 
own confession to the Abb^ de Grancey. 

“ I do not choose to be the only sufferer,” she said to her 
rival, for one has been as ruthless as the other.” 

After enjoying the dismay stamped on the Duchess’ beau¬ 
tiful face, Rosalie went away; she went out no more, and 
returned to Besangon with her mother. 

Mademoiselle de Watteville, who lived alone on her estate 
of Les Rouxey, riding, hunting, refusing two or three offers a 



ALBERT SAVA RON. 


409 


year, going to Besan^on four or five times in the course of 
the winter, and busying herself with improving her land, was 
regarded as a very eccentric personage. She was one of the 
celebrities of the Eastern provinces. 

Madame de Soulas has two children, a boy and a girl, and 
she has grown younger; but young Monsieur de Soulas has 
aged a good deal. 

“ My fortune has cost me dear,” said he to young Chavon- 
court. “ Really to know a bigot it is unfortunately necessary 
to marry her ! ’ ’ 

Mademoiselle de Watteville behaves in the most extra¬ 
ordinary manner. ^‘She has vagaries,” people say. Every 
year she goes to gaze at the walls of the Grande Chartreuse. 
Perhaps she dreams of imitating her grand-uncle by forcing 
the walls of the monastery to find a husband, as Watteville 
broke through those of his monastery to recover his liberty. 

She left Besan^on in 1841, intending, it was said, to get 
married; but the real reason of this expedition is still un¬ 
known, for she returned home in a state which forbids her 
ever appearing in society again. By one of those chances of 
which the Abbe de Grancey had spoken, she happened to be 
on the Loire in a steamboat of which the boiler burst. 
Mademoiselle de Watteville was so severely injured that she 
lost her right arm and her left leg; her face is marked with 
fearful scars, which have bereft her of her beauty; her health, 
cruelly upset, leaves her few days free from suffering. In 
short, she now never leaves the Chartreuse of Les Rouxey, 
v/here she leads a life wholly devoted to religious practices. 


Paris, May, 1842. 


■jo 

\uif 3’f*.N 

•>,ii V •.. 




■-••.?<fc-*If V. IJ'-' ■ ■■■ ■■ ■ 


h<^0 wd 

ewl, nd;;^ -iu xl-i ’j 

^^;av o: - 









?'jtd f:. .Rbifi 


.•) j^h'. vf. ’’ .?■ 

n-: 

; •>ii»eii>mt? 5 i^: 
.■^ ^(Utnnr-'n.o 

i- ' 4*1 ■.•-'■-'ft ■ 


. I'.S ^ 


^•ll/ fti oliivrsljr;^ 

...<:w-;i'>v■• ‘ :>■ 

^ 4 .iS^«,.^^lj(,j|f|(iA«:;».;ii:i :t< 

. |c r htf?^ oi 'I’.yyy.fiQiu v'i V 

yijiiift. r\;i 4^ oidjfetjjfjla 

.h';i’;^ ?tf/ T; ^4>r,l ai 

^-niV ijir-i £( 0<7iui.)t^ ,/:> 'lui U} v.!>i‘tn iii9i j-il ^ud 

V-vj’efy^iioi ni -Krujil b^Mtivy loV^owofl^ 

1 r. > f^iorir V-' 

» J « ■ {^ ,u;>iriq’' feiSft yv.-ific'ip ;i» A 

Jiqtc.l r-nk f ^{-r f}':>i;;'f? ip r. : ■' II ^’, «9 

oa ?di ^Mv>W vd ri'^Ii^l 

f(}iw fz-i.r .^di ritf 'k i)iiL mii }i<^: -rf 

Iff' -.T 7 r>S'l 4 l^ 

;t^ f/?( •': Tt 4 (, *;'*.. 

20viP > - y >r.ic4;y oif; ra^>:5>fjrti" jip/i 

> j.iq tuoijisb't OJ boJitpY^h' v1jc*.'I'v *i 

.:;4,ki .?rj 





■‘11 


>j0T 




LBJe12 



I 


i m 

• 




i. 


% 




r 


- 'X 

\ 

« 

• t 



r 


I- 


« 


• k' 


f 


I 




r«- 


-1 i 



t 



0 

% 


r» 



•r 



1 




» 


« 



• %- 

t 

V 






I 

t « 


I 




4 


s 





% 


f 


» 



1^1 


/.i 




* 


% 


9 








% I 




i' 


\ 


0 






» 


» 



« 



♦ 






\ 


# 


« > 


1 

































































































